more particularly, much in the minds of men, much that has seemed as
invincible as the mountains and as deeply rooted as the sea, magically
loses its solidity, fades, changes, vanishes. When one looked at the map
of Europe a month ago most of the lines of its frontiers seemed almost
as stable as the coastlines. Now they waver under one’s eyes. When one
thought of the heritage of the Crown Prince of Germany, it seemed as
fixed as a constellation, and now in a little while it may be worth as
little as a bloody rag in the trenches of Liège. In little things as in
great, one is suddenly confronted by undreamt-of instabilities. The
Reform Club, which has been a cheerful and refreshing trickle of gold to
me for years, now yields me reluctantly for my cheque two inartistic
pound notes. My other club has ceased the kindly custom of cashing
cheques altogether. One is glad that poor Bagehot did not live to see
this day. Each day now I marvel to wake and find I have still a
banker.... And I perceive too, that if presently my banker dissolved
into the rest of this dissolving world—a thing I should have thought an
unendurable calamity a month ago—I shall laugh and go on.... Ideas that
have ruled life as though they were divine truths are being chased and
slaughtered in the streets. The rights of property, for example, the
sturdy virtues of individualism, all toleration for the rewards of
abstinence, vanished last week suddenly amidst the execrations of
mankind upon a hurrying motor-car loaded with packages of sugar and
flour. They bolted, leaving Socialism and Collectivism in possession.
The State takes over flour mills and the food supply, not merely for
military purposes, but for the general welfare of the community. The
State controls the railways with a sudden complete disregard of
shareholders. There is not even a letter to the _Times_ to object. If
the State sees fit to keep its hold upon these things for good, or
loosens its hold only to improve its grip, I question if there is very
much left in the minds of men, even after the mere preliminary sweeping
of the last two weeks, to dispute possession. Society as we knew it a
year ago has indeed already broken up; it has lost all real cohesion;
only the absence of any attraction elsewhere keeps us bunched together.
We keep our relative positions because there is nowhither to stampede.
Dazed, astonished people fill the streets; and we talk of the national
calm. The more intelligent men thrown out of their jobs make for the
recruiting offices, because they have nothing else to do; we talk of the
magnificent response to Lord Kitchener’s appeal. Everybody is offering
services. Everybody is looking for someone to tell him what to do. It is
not organisation; it is the first phase of dissolution.
I am not writing prophecies now, and I am not “displaying imagination.”
I am just running as hard as I can by the side of the marching facts,
and pointing to them. Institutions and conventions crumble about us, and
release to unprecedented power the two sorts of rebel that ordinary
times suppress, will and ideas.
The character of the new age that must come out of the catastrophes of
this epoch will be no mechanical consequence of inanimate forces. Will
and ideas will take a larger part in this _swirl_-ahead than they have
even taken in any previous collapse. No doubt the mass of mankind will
still pour along the channels of chance, but the desire for a new world
of a definite character will be a force, and if it is multitudinously
unanimous enough, it may even be a guiding force, in shaping the new
time. The common man and base men are scared to docility. Rulers,
pomposities, obstructives are suddenly apologetic, helpful, asking for
help. This is a time of incalculable plasticity. For the men who know
what they want, the moment has come. It is the supreme opportunity, the
test or condemnation of constructive liberal thought in the world.
Now what does Liberalism mean to do? It has always been alleged against
Liberalism that it is carpingly critical, disorganised, dispersed,
impracticable, fractious, readier to “resign” and “rebel” than help.
That is the common excuse of all modern autocracies, bureaucracies, and
dogmatisms. Are they right? Is Liberal thought in this world-crisis
going to present the spectacle of a swarm of little wrangling men swept
before the mindless besom of brute accident, or shall we be able in this
vast collapse or re-birth of the world, to produce and express ideas
that will rule? Has it all been talk? Or has it been planning? Is the
new world, in fact, to be shaped by the philosophers or by the Huns?
First, as to peace. Do Liberals realise that now is the time to plan the
confederation and collective disarmament of Europe, now is the time to
re-draw the map of Europe so that there may be no more rankling sores or
unsatisfied national ambitions? Are the Liberals as a body going to cry
“Peace! Peace!” and leave the questions alone, or are they going to take
hold of them? If Liberalism throughout the world develops no plan of a
pacified world until the diplomatists get to work, it will be too late.
Peace may come to Europe this winter as swiftly and disastrously as the
war.
And next, as to social reconstruction. Do Liberals realise that the
individualist capitalist system is helpless _now_? It may be picked up
unresistingly. It is stunned. A new economic order may be improvised and
probably will in some manner be improvised in the next two or three
years. What are the intentions of Liberalism? What will be the
contribution of Liberalism? One poor Liberal, I perceive, is possessed,
to the exclusion of every other consideration, by the idea that we were
not _legally_ bound to fight for Belgium. A pretty point, but a petty
one. Liberalism is something greater than unfavourable comment on the
deeds of active men. Let us set about defining our intentions. Let us
borrow a little from the rash vigour of the types that have contrived
this disaster. Let us make a truce of our finer feelings and control our
dissentient passions. Let us re-draw the map of Europe boldly, as we
mean it to be re-drawn, and let us re-plan society as we mean it to be
reconstructed. Let us get to work while there is still a little time
left to us. Or while our futile fine intelligences are busy, each with
its particular exquisitely-felt point, the Northcliffes and the
diplomatists, the Welt-Politik whisperers, and the financiers, and
militarists, the armaments interests, and the Cossack Tsar, terrified by
the inevitable red dawn of leaderless social democracy, by the beginning
of the stupendous stampede that will follow this great jar and
displacement, will surely contrive some monstrous blundering settlement,
and the latter state of this world will be worse than the former.
Now is the opportunity to do fundamental things that will otherwise not
get done for hundreds of years. If Liberals throughout the world—and in
this matter the Liberalism of America is a stupendous possibility—will
insist upon a World conference at the end of this conflict, if they
refuse all partial settlements and merely European solutions, they may
re-draw every frontier they choose, they may reduce a thousand chafing
conflicts of race and language and government to a minimum, and set up a
Peace League that will control the globe. The world will be ripe for it.
And the world will be ripe, too, for the banishment of the private
industry in armaments and all the vast corruption that entails from the
earth for ever. It is possible now to make an end to Kruppism. It may
never be possible again. Henceforth let us say weapons must be made by
the State, and only by the State; there must be no more private profit
in blood. That is the second great possibility for Liberalism, linked to
the first. And, thirdly, we may turn our present social necessities to
the most enduring social reorganization; with an absolute minimum of
effort now, we may help to set going methods and machinery that will put
the feeding and housing of the population and the administration of the
land out of the reach of private greed and selfishness for ever.
VIII
THE LIBERAL FEAR OF RUSSIA
It is evident that there is a very considerable dread of the power and
intentions of Russia in this country. It is well that the justification
of this dread should be discussed now, for it is likely to affect the
attitude of British and American Liberalism very profoundly, both
towards the continuation of the war and towards the ultimate settlement.
It is, I believe, an exaggerated dread arising out of our extreme
ignorance of Russian realities. English people imagine Russia to be more
purposeful than she is, more concentrated, more inimical to Western
civilisation. They think of Russian policy as if it were a diabolically
clever spider in a dark place. They imagine that the tremendous
unification of State and national pride and ambition which has made the
German Empire at last insupportable, may presently be repeated upon an
altogether more gigantic scale, that Pan-Slavism will take the place of
Pan-Germanism, as the ruling aggression of the world.
This is a dread due, I am convinced, to fundamental misconceptions and
hasty parallelisms. Russia is not only the vastest country in the world,
but the laxest; she is incapable of that tremendous unification. Not for
two centuries yet, if ever, will it be necessary for a reasonably united
Western Europe to trouble itself, once Prussianism has been disposed of,
about the risk of definite aggression from the East. I do not think it
will ever have to trouble itself.
Socially and politically, Russia is an entirely unique structure. It is
the fashion to talk of Russia as being “in the fourteenth century,” or
“in the sixteenth century.” As a matter of fact, Russia, like everything
else, is in the twentieth century, and it is quite impossible to find in
any other age a similar social organisation. In bulk, she is barbaric.
Between eighty and ninety per cent. of her population is living at a
level very little above the level of those agricultural Aryan races who
were scattered over Europe before the beginning of written history. It
is an illiterate population. It is superstitious in a primitive way,
conservative and religious in a primitive way, it is incapable of
protecting itself in the ordinary commerce of modern life; against the
business enterprise of better educated races it has no weapon but a
peasant’s poor cunning. It is, indeed, a helpless, unawakened mass.
Above these peasants come a few millions of fairly well-educated and
actively intelligent people. They are all that corresponds in any way to
a Western community such as ours. Either they are officials, clerical or
lay, in the great government machine that was consolidated chiefly by
Peter the Great to control the souls and bodies of the peasant mass, or
they are private persons more or less resentfully entangled in that
machine. At the head of this structure, with powers of interference
strictly determined by his individual capacity, is that tragic figure,
the Tsar. That, briefly, is the composition of Russia, and it is unlike
any other State on earth. It will follow laws of its own and have a
destiny of its own.
Involved with the affairs of Russia are certain less barbaric States.
There is Finland, which is by comparison highly civilised, and Poland,
which is not nearly so far in advance of Russia. Both these countries
are perpetually uneasy under the blundering pressure of foolish attempts
to “Russianize” them. In addition, in the South and East are certain
provinces thick with Jews, whom Russia can neither contrive to tolerate
nor assimilate, who have no comprehensible projects for the help or
reorganisation of the country, and who deafen all the rest of Europe
with their bitter, unhelpful tale of grievances, so that it is difficult
to realise how local and partial are their wrongs. There is a certain
“Russian idea,” containing within itself all the factors of failure,
inspiring the general policy of this vast amorphous State. It found its
completest expression in the works of the now defunct Pobedonostsev, and
it pervades the bureaucracy. It is obscurantist, denying the common
people education; it is orthodox, forbidding free thought and preferring
conformity to ability; it is bureaucratic and autocratic; it is
Pan-Slavic, Russianizing, and aggressive. It is this “Russian idea” that
Western Liberalism dreads, and, as I want to point out, dreads
unreasonably. I do not want to plead that it is not a bad thing; it is a
bad thing. I want to point out that, unlike Prussianism, it is not a
great danger to the world at large.
So long as this Russian idea, this Russian Toryism, dominates Russian
affairs, Russia can never be really formidable either to India, to
China, or to the Liberal nations of Western Europe. And whenever she
abandons this Toryism and becomes modern and formidable, she will cease
to be aggressive. That is my case. While Russia has the will to oppress
the world she will never have the power; when she has the power she will
cease to have the will. Let me state my reasons for this belief as
compactly as possible, because if I am right a number of Liberal-minded
people in Great Britain and America and Scandinavia, who may
collectively have a very great influence upon the settlement of Europe
that will follow this war, are wrong. They may want to bolster up a
really dangerous and evil Austria-cum-Germany at the expense of France,
Belgium, and subject Slav populations, because of their dread of this
Russia which can never be at the same time evil and dangerous.
Now, first let me point out what the Boer War showed, and what this
tremendous conflict in Belgium is already enforcing, that the day of the
unintelligent common soldier is past; that men who are animated and
individualised can, under modern conditions, fight better than men who
are unintelligent and obedient. Soldiering is becoming more specialised.
It is calling for the intelligent handling of weapons so elaborate and
destructive that great masses of men in the field are an encumbrance
rather than a power. Battles must spread out, and leading give place to
individual initiative. Consequently Russia can only become powerful
enough to overcome any highly civilised European country by raising its
own average of education and initiative, and this it can do only by
abandoning its obscurantist methods, by _liberalising_ upon the Western
European model. That is to say, it will have to teach its population to
read, to multiply its schools, and increase its universities; and that
will make an entirely different Russia from this one we fear. It
involves a relaxation of the grip of orthodoxy, an alteration of the
intellectual outlook of officialdom, an abandonment of quasi-religious
autocracy—in short, the complete abandonment of the “Russian idea” as we
know it. And it means also a great development of local
self-consciousness. Russia seems homogeneous now, because in the mass it
is so ignorant as to be unaware of its differences; but an educated
Russia means a Russia in which Ruthenian and Great Russian, Lett and
Tartar will be mutually critical and aware of one another. The existing
Russian idea will need to give place to an entirely more democratic,
tolerant, and cosmopolitan idea of Russia as a whole, if Russia is to
merge from its barbarism and remain united. There is no cheap
“Deutschland, Deutschland über alles” sentiment ready-made to hand.
National quality is against it. Patience under patriotism is a German
weakness. Russians could no more go on singing and singing, “Russia,
Russia over all,” than Englishmen could go on singing “Rule, Britannia.”
It would bore them. The temperament of none of the Russian peoples
justifies the belief that they will repeat on a larger scale even as
much docility as the Germans have shown under the Prussians. No one who
has seen the Russians, who has had opportunities of comparing Berlin
with St. Petersburg or Moscow, or who knows anything of Russian art or
Russian literature, will imagine this naturally wise, humorous, and
impatient people reduplicating the self-conscious drill-dulled, soulless
culture of Germany, or the political vulgarities of Potsdam. This is a
terrible world, I admit, but Prussianism is the sort of thing that does
not happen twice.
Russia is substantially barbaric. Who can deny it? State-stuff rather
than a State. But people in Western Europe are constantly writing of
Russia and the Russians as though the qualities natural to barbarism
were qualities inherent in the Russian blood. Russia massacres,
sometimes even with official connivance. But Russia in all its history
has no massacres so abominable as we gentle English were guilty of in
Ireland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Russia, too,
“Russianizes,” sometimes clumsily, sometimes rather successfully. But
Germany has sought to Germanise—in Bohemia and Poland, for instance,
with conspicuous violence and failure. We “Anglicised” Ireland. These
forcible efforts to create uniformity are natural to a phase of social
and political development, from which no people on earth have yet fully
emerged. And if we set ourselves now to create a reunited Poland under
the Russian crown, if we bring all the great influence of the Western
Powers to bear upon the side of the liberalising forces in Finland, if
we do not try to thwart and stifle Russia by closing her legitimate
outlet into the Mediterranean, we shall do infinitely more for human
happiness than if we distrust her, check her, and force her back upon
the barbarism from which, with a sort of blind pathetic wisdom, she
seeks to emerge.
It is unfortunate for Russia that she has come into conspicuous conflict
with the Jews. She has certainly treated them no worse than she has
treated her own people, and she has treated them less atrociously than
they were treated in England during the Middle Ages. The Jews by their
particularism invite the resentment of all uncultivated humanity.
Civilisation and not revolt emancipates them. And while Russian reverses
will throw back her civilisation and intensify the sufferings of all her
subject Jews, Russian success in this alliance will inevitably spell
Westernisation, progress, and amelioration for them. But unhappily this
does not seem to be patent to many Jewish minds. They have been
embittered by their wrongs, and, in the English and still more in the
American Press, a heavy weight of grievance against Russia finds voice,
and distorts the issue of this. While we are still only in the opening
phase of this struggle for life against the Prussianised German Empire,
this struggle to escape from the militarism that has been slowly
strangling civilisation, it is a huge misfortune that this racial
resentment, which, great as it is, is still a little thing beside the
world issues involved, should break the united front of western
civilisation, and that the confidence of Russia should be threatened, as
it is threatened now by doubt and disparagement in the Press. We are not
so sure of victory that we can estrange an ally. We have to make up our
minds to see all Poland reunited under the Russian Crown, and if the
Turks choose to play a foolish part, it is not for us to quarrel now
about the fate of Constantinople. The Allies are not to be tempted into
a quarrel about Constantinople. The balance of power in the Balkans,
that is to say, incessant intrigue between Austria and Russia, has
arrested the civilisation of South-eastern Europe for a century. Let it
topple. An unchallenged Russia will be a wholesome check, and no great
danger for the new greater Servia and the new greater Rumania and the
enlarged and restored Bulgaria this war renders possible.
One civilised country only does Russia really “threaten,” and that
country is Sweden. Sweden has a vast wealth of coal and iron within
reach of Russia’s hand. And I confess I watch Scandinavia with a certain
terror during these days. Sweden is the only European country in which
there is a pro-German militarist party, and she may be tempted—I do not
know how strongly she may not have been tempted already—to drag herself
and Norway into this struggle on the German side. If she does, our
Government will be not a little to blame for not having given her, and
induced Russia to give her, the strongest joint assurances and
guarantees of her integrity for ever. But if the Scandinavian countries
abstain from any participation in this present war, then I do not see
what is to prevent us and France and Russia from making the most public,
definite, and binding declaration of our common interest in Sweden’s
integrity and our common determination to preserve it.
Beyond that, I see no danger to civilisation in Russia anywhere—at
least, no danger so considerable as the Kaiser-Krupp power we fight to
finish. This war, even if it brings us the utmost success, will still
leave Russia face to face with a united and chastened Germany. For it
must be remembered that the downfall of Prussianism and the break-up of
the Austro-Hungarian Empire, will leave German Germany not smaller but
larger than she is now. To India, decently governed and guarded, with an
educational level higher than her own, and three times her gross
population, Russia can only be dangerous through the grossest
misgovernment on our part, and her powers of intervention in China will
be restricted for many years. But all our powers of intervention in
China will be restricted for many years. A breathing space for Chinese
reconstruction is one of the most immediate and least equivocal
blessings of this war. Unless the Chinese are unteachable—and only
stupid people suppose them a stupid race—the China of 1934 will not be a
China for either us or Russia to meddle with. So where in all the world
is this danger from Russia?
The danger of a Krupp-cum-Kaiser dominance of the whole world, on the
other hand, is immediate. Defeat, or even a partial victory for the
Allies, means nothing less than that.
IX
AN APPEAL TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
This appeal comes to you from England at war, and it is addressed to you
because upon your nation rests the issue of this conflict. The influence
of your States upon its nature and duration must needs be enormous, and
at its ending you may play a part such as no nation has ever played
since the world began.
For it rests with you to establish and secure or to refuse to establish
and secure the permanent peace of the world, the final ending of war.
This appeal comes to you from England, but it is no appeal to ancient
associations or racial affinities. Your common language is indeed
English, but your nation has long since outgrown these early links, the
blood of every people in Europe mingles in the unity of your States, and
it is to the greatness of your future rather than the accidents of your
first beginnings, to the humanity in you, and not to the English and
Irish and Scotch and Welsh in you that this appeal is made. Half the
world is at war, or on the very verge of war; it is impossible that you
should disregard or turn away from this conflict. Unavoidably you have
to judge us. Unavoidable is your participation in the ultimate
settlement which will make or mar the welfare of mankind for centuries
to come. We appeal to you to judge us, to listen patiently to our case,
to exert the huge decisive power you hold in the balance not hastily,
not heedlessly. For we do not disguise from ourselves that you can
shatter all our hopes in this conflict. You are a people more than twice
as numerous as we are, and still you are only the beginning of what you
are to be, with a clear prospect of expansion that mocks the limits of
these little islands, with illimitable and still scarcely tapped sources
of wealth and power. You have already come to a stage when a certain
magnanimity becomes you in your relation to European affairs.
Now, while you, because of your fortunate position, and because of the
sane and brotherly relations that have become a fixed tradition along
your northern boundary—we English had a share in securing that—while you
live free of the sight and burthen of military preparations, free as it
seems for ever, all Europe has for more than half a century bent more
and more wearily under a perpetually increasing burthen of armaments.
For many years Europe has been an armed camp, with millions of men
continually under arms, with the fear of war universally poisoning its
life, with its education impoverished, its social development retarded,
with everything pinched but its equipment for war. It would be foolish
to fix the blame for this state of affairs upon any particular nation;
it has grown up, as most great evils grow, quietly, unheeded. One may
cast back in history to the Thirty Years’ War, to such names as
Frederick the Great, Napoleon the First, Napoleon the Third, Bismarck;
what does it matter now who began the thing, and which was most to
blame? Here it is, and we have to deal with it.
But we English do assert that it is the Government of the German Emperor
which has for the last 40 years taken the lead and forced the pace in
these matters, which has driven us English to add warship to warship in
a pitiless competition to retain that predominance at sea upon which our
existence as a free people depends, and which has strained the strength
of France almost beyond the pitch of human endurance, so that the
education and the welfare of her people have suffered greatly, so that
Paris to-day is visibly an impoverished and overtaxed city. And this
perpetual fear of the armed strength of Germany has forced upon France
alliances and entanglements she would otherwise have avoided.
Let us not attempt to deny the greatness of Germany and of Germany’s
contributions to science and art and literature and all that is good in
human life. But evil influences may overshadow the finest peoples, and
it is our case that since the victories of 1871 Germany has been
obsessed by the worship of material power and glory and scornful of
righteousness; that she has been threatening and overbearing to all the
world. There has been a propaganda of cynicism and national roughness, a
declared contempt for treaties and pledges, so that all Europe has been
uneasy and in fear. And since none of us are saints, and certainly no
nations are saintly, we have been resentful; there is not a country in
Europe that has not shown itself resentful under this perpetual menace
of Germany. And now at last and suddenly the threatened thing has come
to pass and Germany is at war.