Each civilized nation protects itself from war by being ready at any
moment to fight any other nation. Each other nation is supposed to be
charged with the spirit of aggression, and it is supposed that that
spirit can be allayed only by steadily increasing the risks involved
in attack.
The modern War System has grown up unconsciously, by way of using war
as a protection against war. The principle is that of fighting the
devil with fire. As each nation, Great Britain beginning it, has
increased its fighting material so as to assure its superiority over
all rivals, so has each rival doubled its own armament with the same
impossible ambition. All this has increased until the greatest
security against war lies in the absolutely ruinous cost with which
war is prosecuted.
The average man in England, France and Germany still believes, with
more or less insistence, that patriotism goes with armor plate. The
fact that there exists no enemy who wishes to attack, or cares to
attack, or hopes to attack, or could afford to attack, or would gain
anything whatever by attack, counts for little in this discussion. It
is always best to be on the safe side, and the money it costs is cheap
insurance against burning seaports and plundered banks. The enemy will
strike when he dares, but not against an odds of 2 to 1 or even 5 to
3. As the enemy swells his equipment to correspond, each nation is
therefore certainly in immediate and imminent danger; its safety lies
in more armed men and armored ships; and in each nation all resources
of borrowing, taxation, and conscription must be strained, that the
enemy may continue to realize that the odds are still against him.
To the observer on the outside, all this rests on a series of
chimeras, the product for the most part of men financially interested
in the war system itself. The war scares, the wars of talk but not of
action, which sweep over Europe, would be ridiculous but for their
baleful consequences.
And now we come to the secret springs of all this. The elements of the
War System are not only armies and navies, but also war traders,
armament builders, money lenders, the recipients of special
privileges, the corrupt portion of the press, and all others drawn
into its service by choice, by interest, or by necessity.
About war scares and war equipment, matters inherent in the War
System, centre the grossest exhibitions of human greed. Those who
scent from afar "the cadaverous odor of lucre" have for the most part
furnished war's dominant motive.
The cost of it all, the war and the War System, is spread over the
whole world. It is felt by you and by me and by everyone, in the
rising price of all articles of necessity. The world, to the degree in
which it is civilized, has become an economic unit. Whatever wastes
its substance here or there, robs your pocket and mine.
It is among officers of the army and navy, especially those retired
from active service, that we find the most ardent apologists for war.
To this end they are trained, and in Europe alone they find
justification for particular wars, as well as arguments for war in
general as a means of securing peace. They can be counted on for
scares or warnings in every case when petty differences arise.
Nowhere does the military class seem to have any thought or care for
ways or means. Economic preparations, the saving of money, or even the
ability to borrow it, counts for nothing with the militarist, to whom
the need to avert war by war outweighs all other considerations.
There have been in all countries many noble exceptions to this point
of view, great soldiers who have confessed with General Sherman, that
they are "sick and tired of war," its "moonshine" glories and its
cruel realities. There are in the service of every great nation
generals and admirals whom every lover of peace is proud to honor. But
the rank and file are creatures of the system, and as such their
influence is felt on the side of war and waste. The advocates of
"peace by preponderance," of peace through risk, of peace through
assured victory, must be counted on the side of war.
The character of the service journals in every nation shows this to be
true. Presumably these periodicals meet the demands made on them, and
each and every one, so far as I know, is a purveyor of war scares, an
advocate of expenditure, and an agency in behalf of the war system and
all of its ramifications.
* * * * *
But the central force of the War System does not lie with the war
makers but with the great war traders. We may never underrate a power
which has such "big money" behind it. The manufacturers of war
implements the world over form, through "interlocking directorates"
and through other means, a gigantic coöperating international trust,
perhaps the most powerful, because certainly the most profitable,
organization of its kind in the world. It is the more efficient and
the more dangerous because, alone among great trusts, it has a
privileged character as the exponent of the highest patriotism, of the
great fundamental duty of "National Defense."
The methods of organization of the syndicates for war, and of their
influence on national expenditures, have been lately set forth in
detail in two remarkable papers, the one by George Herbert Perris of
London, entitled "The War Traders," the other by Francis Delaisi of
Paris, entitled "Le Patriotisme des Plaques Blindées," (the
Patriotism of Armored Plates).
Mr. Perris tells us of the affairs of the great British companies--the
Armstrong-Whitworth Corporation, the Vickers, the John Brown, the
Cammell-Laird and the Coventry Arms Company, with their allies,
tentacles and satellites feeding the patriotism, under many flags, of
nearly half the globe. Delaisi's memoir tells of the Krupps and other
concerns in Germany, and of the Creusots and similar armament trusts
in France.
The capital invested in all the British firms amounts to about
$250,000,000, the dividends ranging each year from 7-1/2% to 15% of
the capital stock. In this industry, ten per cent. is a satisfactory
return, counting stockholders, employees, soldiers and pensioners. Mr.
Perris claims that "it is probable that 1,500,000 adult able-bodied
men, one in six of the occupied adult males in the United Kingdom,
shares to some extent in the 73,000,000 pounds ($365,000,000) a year
which 'National Defense' now costs us." Besides the minor outgoes
which form a sort of bribe money to the general public, the
distribution of dividends affects a smaller but most influential
class. In the share lists of the Armstrong-Whitworth company, Mr.
Perris finds the names of 60 noblemen or noble families, 15 baronets,
20 knights, 8 members of parliament, 20 officers of army or navy, and
8 journalists. Shareholding in the war syndicates and membership in
the naval league go together. But rich and poor are alike affected by
the large returns. "Militarism is strong in England because Lazarus
gets some poor pickings from the feast of Dives."
These great companies especially promote the patriotism of Great
Britain, but they are controlled by no narrow nativism. Under other
flags the same people develop the same noble sentiments. These British
corporations, individually or coöperating, maintain three ship
building companies in Canada: hence the recent movement for a Canadian
navy, to be built in Canadian Yards. They have five tentacles or
subsidiary companies in Italy, (Pozzuoli, Ansaldo, Odero, Terni, and
Orlando), one in Spain (Ferrol), one in Portugal, and one in Japan.
"Time was when Englishmen bled for Portugal; now our old-time ally
must bleed for us." The relations of these British trusts with similar
groups in other countries are most close and friendly. In the "Harvey
United Steel Company" (wound up in 1911), we find them in
international combination with the Bethlehem Steel Plant in
Pennsylvania, the Creusot company in France, and the Essen and
Dillingen concerns in Germany, with a similar international
combination of supporting banks. "In forty years," observes Perris,
"all the Peace Societies have not succeeded in effecting such a
Franco-German reconciliation as this. In the share list (of this
company) Mr. Newbold found the names of one British general and two
major generals, and behind these were the shadowy figures of a vast
host of princes, peers, ministers of the Crown, soldiers, sailors and
clerics. A veritable Brotherhood in Arms! I cannot believe that the
Harvey United Steel Company is really dead. Somewhere it surely has
had a glorious resurrection! Under some metamorphoses it lives and
works to prove the pettiness of national prejudice and the ease of
forgetting such sores as Alsace-Lorraine, when men have learned the
golden wisdom of 'good business.'"
A needed accessory of such good business is a series of commercial
agents, "the strong silent men," who frequent every court of Europe.
Incidental to their work of making sales, is to _create_ a market.
This is done by means of the recurrent war scares. A third element of
importance is the reiteration of the constant fact that only the
latest inventions can serve in war, and that all former purchases
should be "scrapped" as rapidly as possible. Were it not for the
scrapping process, the world's market for implements of destruction
would be speedily glutted. The machinery of war has reached such
marvelous perfection and such an acme of cost that the work of a day
may bankrupt a whole nation. The issue of a campaign may be decided by
the control of a single murderous invention. Thus science has been
called into the service of war, to a degree that inspires the hope
that, by carrying its risks to madness, it makes war virtually
impossible. But meanwhile the expenses go on.
And under such influences half the people of England, let us
say--professors, business men, manufacturers, workingmen, heads of
colleges, and dignitaries of the church, with nine-tenths of the army
and navy, are agents, conscious or unconscious, of the British
armament trust. The greater the stock of weapons, the newer and more
varied the instruments of physical defense, the more pitiful and more
persistent are the fears of invasion. A most striking example of the
collective cowardice of a great but over-armed nation, made up of men
individually brave, is found in the fear to open a tunnel under the
British Channel. Every need of commerce, of travel, of the
friendliness with France, demands the removal of a most unpleasant and
expensive obstacle. Nowhere in the world is there tolerated another
such stumbling block in the way of a gigantic traffic, as that of the
present system of crossing the English Channel. And yet half of
England cries out against the simple remedy, lest, having over-powered
Northern France, the German hordes should come pouring into Dover,
before the watchman at the portcullis should have time to drop the
gates.
The triumph of the war trades in Germany has been even more rapid and
complete than in Great Britain. By the system of interlocking
directorates, the house of Krupp is in alliance with all centres of
German finance. The army, the aristocracy, the ministry, the armament
syndicates, are all bound together in that mailed-fist coöperation in
which the power of Germany seems to lie. The King of Prussia himself
inherited from his august grandfather stock in the Krupp concern to
the amount of five million of thalers, an investment now estimated at
about $12,000,000.
The House of Krupp by various means has placed itself at the summit of
German war patriotism, and it has made most thrifty use of its
opportunities. It employs 250,000 persons, 60,000 of these on salary;
5,000 engineers. It maintains, according to Delaisi, a great hotel,
the Essenerhof, "l'Auberge de la Mort," in which are entertained most
royally all emissaries of all nations who come as purchasing agents of
tools of death. Its specialty is "National Defense," and "Defense not
Defiance" is said to be the "international code signal."
In France "armor plate patriotism" is sustained by the same methods,
and in part by the same money. The leading industries bear the names
of Creusot, Homicourt, and Châtillon-Commentry. A special feature of
the French system, not unknown to the others, is its free use of
representatives of the army and navy. Some twenty admirals and
generals have left the public service for the better paid work of
selling guns and ships. This transfer of allegiance is said to be
"perfectly legal," but it is also dangerous to the morale of the
public service. And it is to these men that we owe most of the
militant revival of French war patriotism, which had lain dormant from
the time of the "Affaire Dreyfus," to that of the "Affaire Agadir."
As to the war-syndicates in the United States, little that is definite
is on record. Like conditions produce like results. The Secretary of
the Navy, Mr. Daniels, reports the existence of a combination among
the three chief producers of armor plate in America, the Midvale,
Bethlehem, and Carnegie Companies. He is reported as saying: "When
this administration came into office, we found that the Navy was
apparently, or, so we were assured, hopelessly, at the mercy of the
three big steel corporations, who submitted practically identical bids
for armor forgings and other materials, and then divided the work
between them to suit themselves." As a result of this condition, the
Secretary rejected their bids, and by going outside, recorded a saving
of $500,000 on the battleship in question.
* * * * *
Behind the war traders, stand their allies, the finance houses who
lend money for the war system. These are not bankers, rather
pawnbrokers, dealing in the credit of nations for a certain per cent.,
according to the straits in which the borrower finds himself. The
banking system of London avoids this class of risks. Paris is now the
centre of the system, and it is usually stipulated with every foreign
war loan that the materials it covers should be bought in Paris. In
earlier times, before the great nations had borrowed to the limit, the
heads of these finance houses as "Masters of Europe" exerted great
personal influence, permitting or forbidding wars. Of recent years
this personal power has greatly dwindled, as joint stock companies of
greater capital and more or less impersonal management, have largely
taken their place. The present influence of the money-lenders is
against war, but in favor of the war system. Minor wars it permits or
even encourages, but these have their risks. The second Balkan war,
unforeseen and undesired, is said to have entailed a loss of some
$30,000,000 to the Paris backers of Bulgaria.
Interlocking with the finance houses are the great exploiting
corporations of the world, operating mostly in the backward nations of
the tropics. These "interests" are often all-powerful in foreign
affairs. They are frequently able to control the operations of the
foreign offices to such a degree that the foreign policy of a great
nation is often but the expression of their will. The desire for
colonial expansion, the "mirage of the map," is a reflection of these
interests, and most "imperial wars" have been undertaken for their
benefit. Abundant illustrations may be had from the recent history of
each of the leading nations. Civil wars in the tropics, as a rule,
have their origin in conflicting interests of people remote from the
field of battle.
Another factor supporting the war system is the hereditary
aristocracy, waning in influence, but still powerful through its
control of money, of the army, and of the Church. The profession of
arms is almost the only one not unworthy of the caste of nobleman. The
military constitutes the right arm of aristocracy; the state church,
the left; while the monarch stands as the visible head. The leaders of
official religion are, with many and honorable exceptions, upholders
of the war system, and apologists for the "God of Battles." The
dissenting churches, having no alliance with privilege, are almost as
unanimously on the side of peace.
With all this, and working toward the same end, is the false education
which the war system has unconsciously produced. For generations it
has obstructed sound teaching of history, of patriotism, of morals, of
religion. It is only after reaching manhood, if at all, that we
realize that Thackeray's "redcoat bully in his boots" has not been the
maker of England's greatness. In the schools of all nations, the man
of violence is the hero--the man on horse-back, the man who bears the
flag, even if in defiance of justice and order.
We have been taught that nations grow strong through war, and that
through war they achieve their destiny. Each man who falls in battle
on any side, in any cause, is a patriot hero, giving his life for
fatherland and for religion. Each boy learns that his own nation was
in the right in every quarrel, that in every battle it was victorious
against great odds, or else defeated through base treachery.
For the war system as it exists to-day, first and finally responsible
are the people who pay for it, the common man in the nations
concerned. The government belongs to him. It is his own fault if it
does not. It cannot go far ahead of him, and it never lags much
behind. When it is laggard, the fault still rests with him. He has
neglected to look after the machinery of government, and it has been
turned against him. This is the case in Germany and in Russia, where
the government represents only part of the people. In these nations,
the man belongs to the state. In the more democratic nations, the
state belongs to the man, who has therefore the more pressing
responsibility.
And this man on the street, the unit of the nation, whether noble or
commoner, whether educated or illiterate, overlooks one fundamental
fact. The other nations of Europe are made up of men about like
himself. What he thinks, they think; what he hopes, they hope. If he
has no designs of aggression, neither have they. If he is "hungry for
peace," so are they. If he finds his taxes distressing, so do they. If
he is one of a majority favoring more cordial relations between
states, they belong to a like majority. If he is one of a minority who
would do away with the war system, there is a similar minority which
will meet him half way. If he is a workman, his problems are those of
all other workmen; if he harbors no evil designs of a war of invasion,
neither do his fellow-workmen across the border. If he is swept off
his feet by a burst of martial music and resounding patriotism, so are
they, and it is just as easy for them to recover as it is for him. If
he is scared by the reckless talk of pangermanists across the channel,
or of chauvinists on the Paris Boulevards, or of panslavists in St.
Petersburg, or of jingoes in London or New York, let him remember that
he finds just such people at home, wherever his home may be--just as
many, just as noisy, and possessed of just as little permanent
influence. The force of mere noise grows less and less, year by year,
in each of the "settled nations." If you are convinced that other
nations need have no fear of your jingoes, by the same token you need
not fear theirs.
The War System is making this great, rich, resourceful world a
bankrupt concern in the hands of its creditors. The nations of the
earth still owe some 40 billions of dollars in gold for the wars of
the last 100 years, from Waterloo to Adrianople. But one nation of all
the number (our own) has made any progress whatever in paying its
share of this debt. The tendency is ever to borrow more, up to and
beyond the limit of credit. The interest is paid, perhaps by
borrowing, but there is no haste about the principal. Except for war,
no nation on earth would ever need to borrow a dollar.
And this interest money of a billion and a quarter every year is only
an incident in the cost of the War System--about a fourth of its
annual expense, even in what we call times of peace. Under the armed
peace of the War System, a kind of frustrate war goes on, an
antagonism the more repulsive because no one has the slightest idea
what it is all about. This antagonism is simply part of the system,
and the system itself is only organized cowardice, for it is perfectly
well known that not one of the great nations has any design to attack
any other. Only the poor crude Balkan people have taken the War System
seriously. Because they have done so, and interfered with trade, they
are now under the ban of Europe, as they lie supine on the floor of
the arena.
The War System has exhausted its own resources. The great nations have
no money with which to fight, and no stomach for fighting. The concert
of Europe is content with the suppression of discords among its own
players. And the reason for this is clearly indicated in the words of
Mr. H. Bell of Lloyds Bank in London. He calls the attention of
bankers to "the great spectre which will rise up in future before the
monied classes when they are invited to lend their money for warlike
purposes. There is going to be very clearly written in the handwriting
on the wall the word 'REPUDIATION.' The peoples of Europe will say:
'We know we ought to pay our interest. We know we ought to pay our
debt, but we cannot. We are human beings, we must live; we are
overtaxed; we cannot get enough to clothe ourselves; we cannot get
enough to eat. We can get no profit from our work!' The men who find
money for purposes of war will not get their money back again."--(H.
Bell. Remarks before the Institute of Bankers, Jan. 17, 1912.)
* * * * *
War cripples the nation physically by cutting off without posterity
its strongest and boldest men. The key of national strength in the
future is found in the good parentage of to-day. The basis of national
greatness is indicated in the principles of Eugenics. To be well born
is the first step to an effective life. "Like the seed is the
harvest." This is the law of heredity. It applies to races of men as
well as to breeds of horses or of sheep. No nation has ever fallen
from leadership, intellectual or physical, save through breeding from
inferior stock. The causes of all decline may be sought among these
three factors, emigration, immigration, war. Rome fell when her
streets swarmed with the sons of slaves, scullions, sutlers,
adventurers, men who were not Romans. When, after her wars, internal
and external, "Only cowards remained, and from their brood came forth
the new generations." The culture of Greece passed away when war had
obliterated the Greeks. "Send forth the best ye breed" and you will
breed from the second best. First best, second best, third best and
fourth among the yeomanry of Europe have been swallowed up in war in
the "Obscene seas of slaughter" over which Europe has gloried and
gloated through all these deluded ages.
The decline in the physique of the average man in France has been
usually cited in evidence of this tendency. But the same causes have
produced like effects in every warlike nation, and the decline in
stature is one of the least important of the results of reversal of
selection. These changes are just as marked in England and Scotland,
as in France, and they are not wanting in Germany. The loss of dash
and initiative is one of these results. Havelock Ellis observes: "The
reckless Englishmen who boldly sailed out from their little island to
fight the Spanish Armada were long ago exterminated; an admirably
prudent and cautious race has been left alive." Better men would make
better history. Braver men would not cower at the war scares of
to-day. Men of character and initiative would not wallow in the London
slums. The sons of those war could not use, swell the records of
pauperism. It is not the strength of the strong but the weakness of
the weak that invites and perpetuates paternalism and tyranny, two
names for the same thing. "Slaves may have wrongs, but only free men
have rights."
Another count against the War System, not unrelated to this, is its
pollution of the blood of the race. The "White Slave Traffic" goes
with the "Conscription Act," both outgrowths of the War System. Army
movement and barrack life have been leading, though not exclusive,
causes of the widespread diffusion of infectious diseases, one of the
most alarming features of civilization to-day.
Another count against war, as yet scarcely realized, is found in the
vandalisms by which it has destroyed so much of worth as well as of
intellectual importance in the art and the architecture of the past.
War respects nothing. It was German bombs which burned the library at
Strassburg. The devastation of the art world is chargeable to war. As
I write this there rise before me the paintings in the gallery at
Munich, of the twenty-one cities of Greece, from Sparta to Corinth,
from Eleusis to Salamis, not as they are now, largely fishing hamlets
by the blue Ægean Sea, not as they were in the days of the glory of
Greece--but as ruined arches and broken columns, half buried in the
ashes of war, the war which blotted out Greece from the world history.
* * * * *
It is plain that sooner or later such a system must come to an end.
The influences that have abolished cannibalism, slavery, and religious
persecution must in the end do away with international war. It seems
also clear that this result will not be obtained primarily in any
direct way by official action. The administrators of nations must
follow public opinion rather than create it. Where public opinion
demanded the burning of witches, the officials had only to see that it
was done decently and in order. At the most, they could only limit
the number to be consumed on any one occasion.
* * * * *
What is our line of attack on the War System?
For the suppression of war we must have a public opinion. And this
opinion must not rest only on the fact that war is brutal and hideous.
That is only half the struggle. There are many good men to whom the
brutal is also the heroic, and still others to whom evil methods are
condoned by success. We must further convince the world, that is, the
common man, the man on the street, that modern war attacks his pocket.
The modern phases of the Peace Movement differ from the earlier ones
in being educational rather than emotional. The early workers were
convinced that war was wicked and unholy, and with this they were
usually content to rest their case.
With the same conviction as to the immorality of war, in the bottom of
his heart, the modern worker tries to find the facts. What is the
historical evolution of war? What are its effects, economic,
biological, moral? What can be found as a national substitute? And
side by side with the study of war and war problems, rises the fabric
of international law. We may not say that the modern method is more
righteous than the earlier, or even more effective. But the treatment
of the subject from all its various points of view, and not mainly
from that of morals and religion, reaches a much wider audience and
has a more immediate effect upon public opinion.
It is an immediate purpose of the Peace Movement to make war a last
resort, not the first one, in times of international differences. To
this and every agency which tends to postpone action and give the
blood time to cool, must contribute.
In civil life, there has been through the ages, a steady movement from
violence to law, from the ordeal of private combat to the arbitration
of the courts. In like fashion, we would extend and strengthen the
parallel tendency among nations. Already arbitration is everywhere
welcomed as a means of composing differences. Conciliation goes
before arbitration and is a factor of equal importance. The very
existence of an Arbitral Tribunal before which differences may be
brought, itself insures that most differences will be adjusted without
its agency. If war is really the last resort, very few nations will
ever come to it, and the War System will decline through neglect, as
of obvious uselessness.
But so long as the War System is in full force, there is always danger
of war. So great an agency can never be fully under control. Its
existence insures the presence of a powerful group of men, anxious to
test its powerful machinery and impatient of civil authority. The War
System is designed for war, defensive of course, but it is a maxim of
war, as of football, that the best defense is to be the first to
score.
As to the Arbitration treaties and the hundreds of disputes which have
been settled for all time by the tribunals at The Hague, no verdict
thus obtained has yet been rejected or opposed, and none is likely to
be. The public opinion of the world would be as wholly opposed to the
repudiation of an adverse verdict as it would be to the repudiation of
a national debt. The verdict and the debt involve the same sanction of
national honor.
The discussion as to the need of an international police to enforce
decisions made at The Hague, is therefore wide of the mark as there
can be no occasion for the use of force in such a connection.
It is becoming more and more evident in Europe that the greatest
single asset of the Peace Movement is the success of the republic of
America.
America is opposed to the War System. There is a much larger
percentage of pacifists in the United States than in any other of the
larger nations. For one thing, it is relatively easy to be a peace man
in a republic. No criticism or obloquy attaches to it. But in Europe,
the direction of least resistance is to follow the wake of the War
System.
In spite of the unhallowed sums we have carelessly spent to build up a
War System, we have none. We shall never have any. Should we pass
under its yoke we should cease to be America. Even our admirals and
generals do not belong to the War System. They are civilians in
spirit, sometimes in disguise, but permeated with ideas of law and
justice, a condition far removed from that of the professional war
maker of the continent of Europe.
The impression of America as a great factor in international
conciliation receives impetus with the celebration of the hundred
years of Anglo-Saxon peace, with its lesson of the unguarded and
therefore perfectly defended 4,000 miles of Canadian frontier. This
impression has been strongly emphasized by the admirable skill by
which President Wilson has up to the time of this writing, honorably
avoided war with Mexico, a war which was considered inevitable in most
political circles in Europe. While on the one hand the United States
cannot have the secret treaty, the cherished tool of the War System
since the days of Machiavelli, and while Democracy is a form of
government fitted for minding one's own business, and for nothing
else, it is recognized that the United States must and should take the
lead in conciliation and in arbitration, as she is now taking the lead
in furnishing means for a world-wide survey of the War System, and for
the resultant propaganda for its abrogation.