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The Great Illusion
The Great Illusion
A Study of the Relation of
Military Power
to
National Advantage
By
Norman Angell
_Fourth Revised and Enlarged Edition_
G.P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY
G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS
COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY
G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY
G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS
FOREIGN EDITIONS OF THIS BOOK ARE NOW ON SALE IN THE FOLLOWING
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_First published, November, 1909. Reprinted, April, 1910;
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The Knickerbocker Press, New York
PREFACE TO THE FOURTH AMERICAN EDITION
If this, the fourth American edition, is bulkier than its predecessors,
it is chiefly because the events of the last two years throw an
interesting light upon the bearing of the book's main thesis on actual
world problems. I have, therefore, added an appendix dealing with
certain criticisms based upon the nature of the first Balkan War, in the
course of which I attempt to show just how the principles elaborated
here have been working out in European politics.
That American interest in the problems here discussed is hardly less
vital than that of Europe I am even more persuaded than when the first
American edition of this book was issued in 1910. It is certain that
opinion in America will not be equipped for dealing with her own
problems arising out of her relations with the Spanish American states,
with Japan, with the Philippines, unless it has some fair understanding
of the principles with which this book deals. Its general interest even
goes farther than this: no great community like that of modern America
can remain indifferent to the drift of general opinion throughout the
world on matters wrapped up with issues so important as those of war and
peace.
That the tangible commercial and business interests of America are
involved in these European events is obvious from the very factors of
financial and commercial interdependence which form the basis of the
argument.
That the interests of Americans are inextricably, if indirectly, bound
up with those of Europe, has become increasingly clear as can be proved
by the barest investigation of the trend of political thought in this
country.
The thesis on its economic side is discussed in terms of the gravest
problem which now faces European statesmanship, but these terms are also
the living symbols of a principle of universal application, as true with
reference to American conditions as to European. If I have not
"localized" the discussion by using illustrations drawn from purely
American cases, it is because these problems have not at present, in the
United States, reached the acute stage that they have in Europe, and
illustrations drawn from the conditions of an actual and pressing
problem give to any discussion a reality which to some extent it might
lose if discussed on the basis of more supposititious cases.
It so happens, however, that in the more abstract section of the
discussion embraced in the second part, which I have termed the "Human
Nature of the Case," I have gone mainly to American authors for the
statement of cases based on those illusions with which the book deals.
For this edition I have thought it worth while thoroughly to revise the
whole of the book and to re-write the chapter on the payment of the
French Indemnity, in order to clear up a misunderstanding to which in
its first form it gave rise. Part III has also been re-written, in order
to meet the changed form of criticism which has resulted from the
discussion of this subject during the last year or two.
It is with very great regret that I have seen this book grow in bulk;
but as it constitutes the statement of a thesis still revolutionary, it
has to cover the whole ground of the discussion, sometimes in great
detail. I have, however, adopted an arrangement and method of
presentation by which, I trust, the increase in bulk will not render it
less clear. The general arrangement is as follows:
The Synopsis is a very brief indication of the scope of the whole
argument, which is not that war is impossible, but that it is
futile--useless, even when completely victorious, as a means of securing
those moral or material ends which represent the needs of modern
civilized peoples; and that on a general realization of this truth
depends the solution of the problem of armaments and warfare.
The general economic argument is summarized in Chapter III., Part I.
The moral, psychological, and biological argument is summarized in
Chapter II., Part II.
The practical outcome--what should be our policy with reference to
defence, why progress depends upon the improvement of public opinion and
the best general methods of securing that--is discussed in Part III.
This method of treatment has involved some small repetition of fact
and illustration, but the repetition is trifling in bulk--it does not
amount in all to the value of more than three or four pages--and I have
been more concerned to make the matter in hand clear to the reader than
to observe all the literary canons. I may add that, apart from this, the
process of condensation has been carried to its extreme limit for the
character of data dealt with, and that those who desire to understand
thoroughly the significance of the thesis with which the book deals--it
is worth understanding--had really better read every line of it!
One personal word may perhaps be excused as explaining certain
phraseology, which would seem to indicate that the author is of English
nationality. He happens to be of English birth, but to have passed his
youth and early manhood in the United States, having acquired American
citizenship there. This I hope entitles him to use the collective "we"
on both sides of the Atlantic. I may add that the last fifteen years
have been passed mainly in Europe studying at first hand the problems
here dealt with.
N.A.
LONDON, October, 1913.
PREFACE
The present volume is the outcome of a large pamphlet published in
Europe at the end of last year entitled _Europe's Optical Illusion_. The
interest that the pamphlet created and the character of the discussion
provoked throughout Europe persuaded me that its subject-matter was
worth fuller and more detailed treatment than then given it. Herewith
the result of that conviction. The thesis on its economic side is
discussed in the terms of the gravest problem which now faces European
statesmanship, but these terms are also the living symbols of a
principle of universal application, as true with reference to American
conditions as to European. If I have not "localized" the discussion by
using illustrations drawn from purely American cases, it is because
these problems have not at present in the United States reached the
acute stage that they have in Europe, and illustrations drawn from the
conditions of an actual and pressing problem give to any discussion a
reality which to some extent it might lose if discussed on the basis of
more suppositious cases.
It so happens, however, that in the more abstract section of the
discussion embraced in the second part, which I have termed the "Human
Nature of the Case," I have gone mainly to American authors for the
statement of cases based on those illusions with which the book deals.
N.A.
PARIS, August, 1910.
SYNOPSIS
What are the fundamental motives that explain the present rivalry of
armaments in Europe, notably the Anglo-German? Each nation pleads the
need for defence; but this implies that someone is likely to attack, and
has therefore a presumed interest in so doing. What are the motives
which each State thus fears its neighbors may obey?
They are based on the universal assumption that a nation, in order to
find outlets for expanding population and increasing industry, or simply
to ensure the best conditions possible for its people, is necessarily
pushed to territorial expansion and the exercise of political force
against others (German naval competition is assumed to be the expression
of the growing need of an expanding population for a larger place in the
world, a need which will find a realization in the conquest of English
Colonies or trade, unless these are defended); it is assumed, therefore,
that a nation's relative prosperity is broadly determined by its
political power; that nations being competing units, advantage, in the
last resort, goes to the possessor of preponderant military force, the
weaker going to the wall, as in the other forms of the struggle for
life.
The author challenges this whole doctrine. He attempts to show that it
belongs to a stage of development out of which we have passed; that the
commerce and industry of a people no longer depend upon the expansion of
its political frontiers; that a nation's political and economic
frontiers do not now necessarily coincide; that military power is
socially and economically futile, and can have no relation to the
prosperity of the people exercising it; that it is impossible for one
nation to seize by force the wealth or trade of another--to enrich
itself by subjugating, or imposing its will by force on another; that,
in short, war, even when victorious, can no longer achieve those aims
for which peoples strive.
He establishes this apparent paradox, in so far as the economic problem
is concerned, by showing that wealth in the economically civilized world
is founded upon credit and commercial contract (these being the
outgrowth of an economic interdependence due to the increasing division
of labor and greatly developed communication). If credit and commercial
contract are tampered with in an attempt at confiscation, the
credit-dependent wealth is undermined, and its collapse involves that of
the conqueror; so that if conquest is not to be self-injurious it must
respect the enemy's property, in which case it becomes economically
futile. Thus the wealth of conquered territory remains in the hands of
the population of such territory. When Germany annexed Alsatia, no
individual German secured a single mark's worth of Alsatian property as
the spoils of war. Conquest in the modern world is a process of
multiplying by _x_, and then obtaining the original figure by dividing
by _x_. For a modern nation to add to its territory no more adds to the
wealth of the people of such nation than it would add to the wealth of
Londoners if the City of London were to annex the county of Hertford.
The author also shows that international finance has become so
interdependent and so interwoven with trade and industry that the
intangibility of an enemy's property extends to his trade. It results
that political and military power can in reality do nothing for trade;
the individual merchants and manufacturers of small nations, exercising
no such power, compete successfully with those of the great. Swiss and
Belgian merchants drive English from the British Colonial market; Norway
has, relatively to population, a greater mercantile marine than Great
Britain; the public credit (as a rough-and-ready indication, among
others, of security and wealth) of small States possessing no political
power often stands higher than that of the Great Powers of Europe,
Belgian Three per Cents. standing at 96, and German at 82; Norwegian
Three and a Half per Cents. at 102, and Russian Three and a Half per
Cents. at 81.
The forces which have brought about the economic futility of military
power have also rendered it futile as a means of enforcing a nation's
moral ideals or imposing social institutions upon a conquered people.
Germany could not turn Canada or Australia into German colonies--_i.e._,
stamp out their language, law, literature, traditions, etc.--by
"capturing" them. The necessary security in their material possessions
enjoyed by the inhabitants of such conquered provinces, quick
inter-communication by a cheap press, widely-read literature, enable
even small communities to become articulate and effectively to defend
their special social or moral possessions, even when military conquest
has been complete. The fight for ideals can no longer take the form of
fight between nations, because the lines of division on moral questions
are within the nations themselves and intersect the political frontiers.
There is no modern State which is completely Catholic or Protestant, or
liberal or autocratic, or aristocratic or democratic, or socialist or
individualist; the moral and spiritual struggles of the modern world go
on between citizens of the same State in unconscious intellectual
co-operation with corresponding groups in other States, not between the
public powers of rival States.
This classification by strata involves necessarily a redirection of
human pugnacity, based rather on the rivalry of classes and interests
than on State divisions. War has no longer the justification that it
makes for the survival of the fittest; it involves the survival of the
less fit. The idea that the struggle between nations is a part of the
evolutionary law of man's advance involves a profound misreading of the
biological analogy.
The warlike nations do not inherit the earth; they represent the
decaying human element. The diminishing role of physical force in all
spheres of human activity carries with it profound psychological
modifications.
These tendencies, mainly the outcome of purely modern conditions (_e.g._
rapidity of communication), have rendered the problems of modern
international politics profoundly and essentially different from the
ancient; yet our ideas are still dominated by the principles and axioms,
images and terminology of the bygone days.
The author urges that these little-recognized facts may be utilized for
the solution of the armament difficulty on at present untried lines--by
such modification of opinion in Europe that much of the present motive
to aggression will cease to be operative, and by thus diminishing the
risk of attack, diminishing to the same extent the need for defence. He
shows how such a political reformation is within the scope of practical
politics, and the methods which should be employed to bring it about.
CONTENTS
PART I
THE ECONOMICS OF THE CASE
CHAPTER PAGE
I. STATEMENT OF THE ECONOMIC CASE FOR WAR 3
II. THE AXIOMS OF MODERN STATECRAFT 14
III. THE GREAT ILLUSION 28
IV. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF CONFISCATION 50
V. FOREIGN TRADE AND MILITARY POWER 68
VI. THE INDEMNITY FUTILITY 88
VII. HOW COLONIES ARE OWNED 107
VIII. THE FIGHT FOR "THE PLACE IN THE SUN." 131
PART II
THE HUMAN NATURE AND MORALS OF THE CASE
I. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CASE FOR WAR 155
II. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CASE FOR PEACE 168
III. UNCHANGING HUMAN NATURE 198
IV. DO THE WARLIKE NATIONS INHERIT THE EARTH? 222
V. THE DIMINISHING FACTOR OF PHYSICAL FORCE:
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESULTS 261
VI. THE STATE AS A PERSON: A FALSE ANALOGY
AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 296
PART III
THE PRACTICAL OUTCOME
I. THE RELATION OF DEFENCE TO AGGRESSION 329
II. ARMAMENT, BUT NOT ALONE ARMAMENT 341
III. IS THE POLITICAL REFORMATION POSSIBLE? 353
IV. METHODS 368
APPENDIX ON RECENT EVENTS IN EUROPE 383
* * * * *
PART I
_THE ECONOMICS OF THE CASE_
CHAPTER I PAGES
STATEMENT OF THE ECONOMIC CASE FOR WAR
Where can the Anglo-German rivalry of armaments
end?--Why peace advocacy fails--Why it deserves
to fail--The attitude of the peace advocate--The
presumption that the prosperity of nations depends
upon their political power, and consequent
necessity of protection against aggression of
other nations who would diminish our power to
their advantage--These the universal axioms of
international politics 3-13
CHAPTER II
THE AXIOMS OF MODERN STATECRAFT
Are the foregoing axioms unchallengeable?--Some typical
statements of them--German dreams of conquest--Mr.
Frederic Harrison on results of defeat of British arms
and invasion of England--Forty millions starving 14-27
CHAPTER III
THE GREAT ILLUSION
These views founded on a gross and dangerous
misconception--What a German victory could and could not
accomplish--What an English victory could and could not
accomplish--The optical illusion of conquest--There can
be no transfer of wealth--The prosperity of the little
States in Europe--German Three per Cents. at 82 and
Belgian at 96--Russian Three and a Half per Cents. at
81, Norwegian at 102--What this really means--If Germany
annexed Holland, would any German benefit or any
Hollander?--The "cash value" of Alsace-Lorraine 28-49
CHAPTER IV
THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF CONFISCATION
Our present terminology of international politics an
historical survival--Wherein modern conditions differ
from ancient--The profound change effected by Division
of Labor--The delicate interdependence of international
finance--Attila and the Kaiser--What would happen if a
German invader looted the Bank of England--German trade
dependent upon English credit--Confiscation of an
enemy's property an economic impossibility under modern
conditions--Intangibility of a community's wealth 50-67
CHAPTER V
FOREIGN TRADE AND MILITARY POWER
Why trade cannot be destroyed or captured by a military
Power--What the processes of trade really are, and how a
navy affects them--_Dreadnoughts_ and business--While
_Dreadnoughts_ protect British trade from hypothetical
German warships, the real German merchant is carrying it
off, or the Swiss or the Belgian--The "commercial
aggression" of Switzerland--What lies at the bottom of
the futility of military conquest--Government brigandage
becomes as profitless as private brigandage--The real
basis of commercial honesty on the part of Government 68-87
CHAPTER VI
THE INDEMNITY FUTILITY
The real balance-sheet of the Franco-German War--Disregard
of Sir Robert Giffen's warning in interpreting the
figures--What really happened in France and Germany
during the decade following the war--Bismarck's
disillusionment--The necessary discount to be given an
indemnity--The bearing of the war and its result on
German prosperity and progress 88-106
CHAPTER VII
HOW COLONIES ARE OWNED
Why twentieth-century methods must differ from
eighteenth--The vagueness of our conceptions
of statecraft--How Colonies are "owned"--Some
little-recognized facts--Why foreigners could not
fight England for her self-governing Colonies--She
does not "own" them, since they are masters of their
own destiny--The paradox of conquest: England in a
worse position in regard to her own Colonies than in
regard to foreign nations--Her experience as the oldest
and most practised colonizer in history--Recent French
experience--Could Germany hope to do what England
cannot do 107-130
CHAPTER VIII
THE FIGHT FOR "THE PLACE IN THE SUN"
How Germany really expands--Where her real Colonies
are--How she exploits without conquest--What is the
difference between an army and a police force?--The
policing of the world--Germany's share of it in the
Near East 131-151
PART II
_THE HUMAN NATURE AND MORALS OF THE CASE_
CHAPTER I
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CASE FOR WAR
The non-economic motives of war--Moral and
psychological--The importance of these pleas--English,
German, and American exponents--The biological plea 155-167
CHAPTER II
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CASE FOR PEACE
The shifting ground of pro-war arguments--The narrowing
gulf between the material and moral ideals--The non-rational
causes of war--False biological analogies--The real law
of man's struggles: struggle with Nature, not with other
men--Outline sketch of man's advance and main operating
factor therein--The progress towards elimination of
physical force--Co-operation across frontiers and its
psychological result--Impossible to fix limits of
community--Such limits irresistibly expanding--Break-up
of State homogeneity--State limits no longer coinciding
with real conflicts between men 168-197
CHAPTER III
UNCHANGING HUMAN NATURE
The progress from cannibalism to Herbert Spencer--The
disappearance of religious oppression by
Government--Disappearance of the duel--The Crusaders
and the Holy Sepulchre--The wail of militarist writers
at man's drift away from militancy 198-221
CHAPTER IV
DO THE WARLIKE NATIONS INHERIT THE EARTH?
The confident dogmatism of militarist writers on this
subject--The facts--The lessons of Spanish America--How
conquest makes for the survival of the unfit--Spanish
method and English method in the New World--The virtues
of military training--The Dreyfus case--The threatened
Germanization of England--"The war which made Germany
great and Germans small" 222-260
CHAPTER V
THE DIMINISHING FACTOR OF PHYSICAL FORCE: PSYCHOLOGICAL RESULTS
Diminishing factor of physical force--Though diminishing,
physical force has always had an important role in human
affairs--What is underlying principle, determining
advantageous and disadvantageous use of physical
force?--Force that aids co-operation in accord with
law of man's advance: force that is exercised for
parasitism in conflict with such law and disadvantageous
for both parties--Historical process of the abandonment
of physical force--The Khan and the London
tradesman--Ancient Rome and modern Britain--The
sentimental defence of war as the purifier of human
life--The facts--The redirection of human pugnacity 261-295
CHAPTER VI
THE STATE AS A PERSON: A FALSE ANALOGY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
Why aggression upon a State does not correspond to
aggression upon an individual--Our changing conception
of collective responsibility--Psychological progress in
this connection--Recent growth of factors breaking down
the homogeneous personality of States 296-325
PART III
_THE PRACTICAL OUTCOME_
CHAPTER I
THE RELATION OF DEFENCE TO AGGRESSION
Necessity for defence arises from the existence of a motive
for attack--Platitudes that everyone overlooks--To
attenuate the motive for aggression is to undertake a
work of defence 329-340
CHAPTER II
ARMAMENT, BUT NOT ALONE ARMAMENT
Not the facts, but men's belief about facts, shapes their
conduct--Solving a problem of two factors by ignoring
one--The fatal outcome of such a method--The German Navy
as a "luxury"--If both sides concentrate on armament
alone 341-352
CHAPTER III
IS THE POLITICAL REFORMATION POSSIBLE?
Men are little disposed to listen to reason, "therefore
we should not talk reason"--Are men's ideas immutable? 353-367
CHAPTER IV
METHODS
Relative failure of Hague Conferences and the cause--Public
opinion the necessary motive force of national action--That
opinion only stable if informed--"Friendship" between
nations and its limitations--America's role in the coming
"Political Reformation" 368-382
APPENDIX ON RECENT EVENTS IN EUROPE 383-406
INDEX 407-416
PART I
THE ECONOMICS OF THE CASE
CHAPTER I
STATEMENT OF THE ECONOMIC CASE FOR WAR
Where can the Anglo-German rivalry of armaments end?--Why peace
advocacy fails--Why it deserves to fail--The attitude of the peace
advocate--The presumption that the prosperity of nations depends
upon their political power, and consequent necessity of protection
against aggression of other nations who would diminish our power
to their advantage--These the universal axioms of international
politics.
It is generally admitted that the present rivalry in armaments in
Europe--notably such as that now in progress between England and
Germany--cannot go on in its present form indefinitely. The net result
of each side meeting the efforts of the other with similar efforts is
that at the end of a given period the relative position of each is what
it was originally, and the enormous sacrifices of both have gone for
nothing. If as between England and Germany it is claimed that England is
in a position to maintain the lead because she has the money, Germany
can retort that she is in a position to maintain the lead because she
has the population, which must, in the case of a highly organized
European nation, in the end mean money. Meanwhile, neither side can
yield to the other, as the one so doing would, it is felt, be placed at
the mercy of the other, a situation which neither will accept.
There are two current solutions which are offered as a means of egress
from this _impasse_. There is that of the smaller party, regarded in
both countries for the most part as one of dreamers and doctrinaires,
who hope to solve the problem by a resort to general disarmament, or, at
least, a limitation of armament by agreement. And there is that of the
larger, which is esteemed the more practical party, of those who are
persuaded that the present state of rivalry and recurrent irritation is
bound to culminate in an armed conflict, which, by definitely reducing
one or other of the parties to a position of manifest inferiority, will
settle the thing for at least some time, until after a longer or shorter
period a state of relative equilibrium is established, and the whole
process will be recommenced _da capo_.
This second solution is, on the whole, accepted as one of the laws of
life: one of the hard facts of existence which men of ordinary courage
take as all in the day's work. And in every country those favoring the
other solution are looked upon either as people who fail to realize the
hard facts of the world in which they live, or as people less concerned
with the security of their country than with upholding a somewhat
emasculate ideal; ready to weaken the defences of their own country on
no better assurance than that the prospective enemy will not be so
wicked as to attack them.
To this the virile man is apt to oppose the law of conflict. Most of
what the nineteenth century has taught us of the evolution of life on
the planet is pressed into the service of this struggle-for-life
philosophy. We are reminded of the survival of the fittest, that the
weakest go to the wall, and that all life, sentient and non-sentient, is
but a life of battle. The sacrifice involved in armament is the price
which nations pay for their safety and for their political power. The
power of England has been the main condition of her past industrial
success; her trade has been extensive and her merchants rich, because
she has been able to make her political and military force felt, and to
exercise her influence among all the nations of the world. If she has
dominated the commerce of the world, it is because her unconquered navy
has dominated, and continues to dominate, all the avenues of commerce.
This is the currently accepted argument.
The fact that Germany has of late come to the front as an industrial
nation, making giant strides in general prosperity and well-being, is
deemed also to be the result of _her_ military successes and the
increasing political power which she is coming to exercise in
Continental Europe. These things, alike in England and in Germany, are
accepted as the axioms of the problem, as the citations given in the
next chapter sufficiently prove. I am not aware that a single authority
of note, at least in the world of workaday politics, has ever challenged
or disputed them. Even those who have occupied prominent positions in
the propaganda of peace are at one with the veriest fire-eaters on this
point. Mr. W.T. Stead was one of the leaders of the big navy party in
England. Mr. Frederic Harrison, who all his life had been known as the
philosopher protagonist of peace, declared recently that, if England
allowed Germany to get ahead of her in the race for armaments, "famine,
social anarchy, incalculable chaos in the industrial and financial
world, would be the inevitable result. Britain may live on ... but
before she began to live freely again she would have to lose half her
population, which she could not feed, and all her overseas Empire, which
she could not defend.... How idle are fine words about retrenchment,
peace, and brotherhood, whilst we lie open to the risk of unutterable
ruin, to a deadly fight for national existence, to war in its most
destructive and cruel form." On the other side we have friendly critics
of England, like Professor von Schulze-Gaevernitz, writing: "We want our
[_i.e._ Germany's] navy in order to confine the commercial rivalry of
England within innocuous limits, and to deter the sober sense of the
English people from the extremely threatening thought of attack upon
us.... The German navy is a condition of our bare existence and
independence, like the daily bread on which we depend not only for
ourselves, but for our children."
Confronted by a situation of this sort, one is bound to feel that the
ordinary argument of the pacifist entirely breaks down; and it breaks
down for a very simple reason. He himself accepts the premise which has
just been indicated--viz., that the victorious party in the struggle for
political predominance gains some material advantage over the party
which is conquered. The proposition even to the pacifist seems so
self-evident that he makes no effort to combat it. He pleads his case
otherwise. "It cannot be denied, of course," says one peace advocate,
"that the thief _does_ secure some material advantage by his theft. What
we plead is that if the two parties were to devote to honest labor the
time and energy devoted to preying upon each other, the permanent gain
would more than offset the occasional booty."
Some pacifists go further, and take the ground that there is a conflict
between the natural law and the moral law, and that we must choose the
moral even to our hurt. Thus Mr. Edward Grubb writes:
Self-preservation is not the final law for nations any more
than for individuals.... The progress of humanity may demand
the extinction (in this world) of the individual, and it may
demand also the example and the inspiration of a martyr nation.
So long as the Divine providence has need of us, Christian
faith requires that we shall trust for our safety to the unseen
but real forces of right dealing, truthfulness, and love; but,
should the will of God demand it, we must be prepared, as
Jeremiah taught his nation long ago, to give up even our
national life for furthering those great ends "to which the
whole creation moves."
This may be "fanaticism," but, if so, it is the fanaticism of
Christ and of the prophets, and we are willing to take our
places along with them.[1]
The foregoing is really the keynote of much pacifist propaganda. In our
own day, Count Tolstoi has even expressed anger at the suggestion that
any reaction against militarism, on other than moral grounds, can be
efficacious.
The peace advocate pleads for "altruism" in international relationships,
and in so doing admits that successful war may be to the interest,
though the immoral interest, of the victorious party. That is why the
"inhumanity" of war bulks so largely in his propaganda, and why he
dwells so much upon its horrors and cruelties.
It thus results that the workaday world and those engaged in the rough
and tumble of practical politics have come to look upon the peace ideal
as a counsel of perfection, which may one day be attained when human
nature, as the common phrase is, has been improved out of existence, but
not while human nature remains what it is. While it remains possible to
seize a tangible advantage by a man's strong right arm the advantage
will be seized, and woe betide the man who cannot defend himself.
Nor is this philosophy of force either as conscienceless, as brutal, or
as ruthless as its common statement would make it appear. We know that
in the world as it exists to-day, in spheres other than those of
international rivalry, the race is to the strong, and the weak get
scant consideration. Industrialism and commercialism are as full of
cruelties as war itself--cruelties, indeed, that are longer drawn out,
more refined, though less apparent, and, it may be, appealing less to
the common imagination than those of war. With whatever reticence we may
put the philosophy into words, we all feel that conflict of interests in
this world is inevitable, and that what is an incident of our daily
lives should not be shirked as a condition of those occasional titanic
conflicts which mould the history of the world.
The virile man doubts whether he ought to be moved by the plea of the
"inhumanity" of war. The masculine mind accepts suffering, death itself,
as a risk which we are all prepared to run even in the most unheroic
forms of money-making; none of us refuses to use the railway train
because of the occasional smash, to travel because of the occasional
shipwreck, and so on. Indeed, peaceful industry demands a heavier toll
even in blood than does a war, fact which the casualty statistics in
railroading, fishing, mining and seamanship, eloquently attest; while
such peaceful industries as fishing and shipping are the cause of as
much brutality.[2] The peaceful administration of the tropics takes as
heavy a toll in the health and lives of good men, and much of it, as in
the West of Africa, involves, unhappily, a moral deterioration of human
character as great as that which can be put to the account of war.
Beside these peace sacrifices the "price of war" is trivial, and it is
felt that the trustees of a nation's interests ought not to shrink from
paying that price should the efficient protection of those interests
demand it. If the common man is prepared, as we know he is, to risk his
life in a dozen dangerous trades and professions for no object higher
than that of improving his position or increasing his income, why should
the statesman shrink from such sacrifices as the average war demands, if
thereby the great interests which have been confided to him can be
advanced? If it be true, as even the pacifist admits that it may be
true, that the tangible material interests of a nation can be advanced
by warfare; if, in other words, warfare can play some large part in the
protection of the interests of humanity, the rulers of a courageous
people are justified in disregarding the suffering and the sacrifice
that it may involve.
Of course, the pacifist falls back upon the moral plea: we have no
right to take by force. But here again the common sense of ordinary
humanity does not follow the peace advocate. If the individual
manufacturer is entitled to use all the advantages which great financial
and industrial resources may give him against a less powerful
competitor, if he is entitled, as under our present industrial scheme he
is entitled, to overcome competition by a costly and perfected
organization of manufacture, of advertisement, of salesmanship, in a
trade in which poorer men gain their livelihood, why should not the
nation be entitled to overcome the rivalry of other nations by utilizing
the force of its public services? It is a commonplace of industrial
competition that the "big man" takes advantage of _all_ the weaknesses
of the small man--his narrow means, his ill-health even--to undermine
and to undersell. If it were true that industrial competition were
always merciful, and national or political competition always cruel, the
plea of the peace man might be unanswerable; but we know, as a matter of
fact, that this is not the case, and, returning to our starting-point,
the common man feels that he is obliged to accept the world as he finds
it, that struggle and warfare, in one form or another, are among the
conditions of life, conditions which he did not make. Moreover he is not
at all sure that the warfare of arms is necessarily either the hardest
or the most cruel form of that struggle which exists throughout the
universe. In any case, he is willing to take the risks, because he feels
that military predominance gives him a real and tangible advantage, a
material advantage translatable into terms of general social well-being,
by enlarged commercial opportunities, wider markets, protection against
the aggression of commercial rivals, and so on. He faces the risk of war
in the same spirit as that in which a sailor or a fisherman faces the
risk of drowning, or a miner that of the choke damp, or a doctor that of
a fatal disease, because he would rather take the supreme risk than
accept for himself and his dependents a lower situation, a narrower and
meaner existence, with complete safety. He also asks whether the lower
path is altogether free from risks. If he knows much of life he knows
that in very many circumstances the bolder way is the safer way.
That is why it is that the peace propaganda has so signally failed, and
why the public opinion of the countries of Europe, far from restraining
the tendency of their Governments to increase armaments, is pushing them
into still greater expenditure. It is universally assumed that national
power means national wealth, national advantage; that expanding
territory means increased opportunity for industry; that the strong
nation can guarantee opportunities for its citizens that the weak nation
cannot. The Englishman, for instance, believes that his wealth is
largely the result of his political power, of his political domination,
mainly of his sea power; that Germany with her expanding population must
feel cramped; that she must fight for elbow-room; and that if he does
not defend himself he will illustrate that universal law which makes of
every stomach a graveyard. He has a natural preference for being the
diner rather than the dinner. As it is universally admitted that wealth
and prosperity and well-being go with strength and power and national
greatness, he intends, so long as he is able, to maintain that strength
and power and greatness, and not to yield it even in the name of
altruism. And he will not yield it, because should he do so it would be
simply to replace British power and greatness by the power and greatness
of some other nation, which he feels sure would do no more for the
well-being of civilization as a whole than he is prepared to do. He is
persuaded that he can no more yield in the competition of armaments,
than as a business man or as a manufacturer he could yield in commercial
competition to his rival; that he must fight out his salvation under
conditions as he finds them, since he did not make them, and since he
cannot change them.
Admitting his premises--and these premises are the universally accepted
axioms of international politics the world over--who shall say that he
is wrong?