PACIFISM STATIC AND DYNAMIC
If at home we have a firm basis for national development, if we grow up
as a Great Power beyond the range of fierce conflicts between the
nations, the opportunity will be offered us to contribute in some
degree to the ultimate establishment of peace, or at least to the
limitation of war, in the world outside. Our influence can be cast
upon the side of peace and augment the forces making for peace. Our
hope lies in a national development, which will permit us while
pursuing our larger national interests to work towards a great
community of interest among other nations.
In such an international peace the United States has a direct and an
indirect interest. It has been recently asserted that we in America
might regard the present war with equanimity since it brought us huge
profits. Undoubtedly there is money to be made out of the selling of
provisions and munitions as well as from trade in countries from which
competitors are temporarily excluded. On the other hand, the war means
the impoverishment of European nations, who are our main purveyors and
customers, and eventually the losses suffered by combatants must be
shared to some extent by us who are non-combatants. The war brings
about a dislocation of the world industry, a shrinking of capital, and
in the end higher prices and a possible reduction in real wages. {218}
In the years to come we shall be forced to pay our share of the cost.
Nor is this economic motive our sole reason for desiring international
peace. We are linked to the nations of Europe, and however we declaim
against "hyphenates," cannot prevent our immigrants from sympathising
with the land of their birth. The present straining of loyalties in
this country is a sufficient reason for our desiring peace in Europe.
Nor do we like bloodshed or the political reaction and the backwash of
barbarism that wars entail. Finally, however neutral we remain, there
is always the possibility that we may be plunged into a great European
conflict, in which in the beginning at least we shall have no direct
interest.
Diplomatically also, war in Europe is of no overwhelming advantage to
us. In the early days of the Republic, a constant balancing of hostile
forces prevented England and France from taking advantage of our
weakness. The quarrels of Europe enabled us to preserve our
independence by opposing a unitary strength to the enfeebling European
dualism; otherwise we might not have dared to use so shrill a tone in
admonishing the great powers. But even had the eagle not screeched, we
might still have led a satisfactory national existence. Whatever was
true in the past, however, we need no longer be so completely
defenceless that we must fear that peace in Europe would mean a
conquest of America. We should rather have Europe fight itself than
us, but--in dollars and cents as in other values--we should prefer to
see the world at peace.
We shall not secure peace, however, by merely wishing for it or by
merely preaching it. In the midst of war there has always been the
longing for peace, and throughout the centuries voices have been raised
calling upon mankind to give up its war upon itself. The ideal of
peace {219} pervades much of all folklore; it inspires the Old
Testament prophets and is everywhere expressed in the New Testament.
The religious ideals of the Chinese, Hindus and Persians are suffused
with the hope of peace, and Greek and Roman philosophers and poets
dreamed of a peaceful commonwealth of peoples and planned the
Federation of the World. The Early Church Fathers, Irenaeus, Clement of
Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine, preached the gospel of
peace, and while the Church doctrines later changed in this respect,
there reappeared again and again during the Mediaeval Period the
conception of a World State, presided over by Emperor or Pope, and
ending once for all the ceaseless strife among princes. After the
Reformation religious sects grew up, like the Mennonites and the
Quakers, who preached not only peace but non-resistance. Out of all
this longing for peace, out of all these proposals, however, came
nothing. Similarly the pacifist writings of the Abbe de St. Pierre, of
Rousseau, of Leibnitz, of Montesquieu, of Voltaire, of Kant, of Jeremy
Bentham and of hundreds of others did not bring the world a single step
nearer to an elimination of war.[1]
Throughout this long history, pacifism failed because it was in no
sense based upon the actual conditions of the world. It was a
religious, sentimental, hortatory pacifism. Finding peace desirable,
it pleaded with the men who ruled nations to compose their quarrels.
It was an appeal not to the interest but to the sentiments of men. It
discovered that war was evil and exhorted nations and rulers to refrain
from evil.
With the period of enlightenment that began shortly before the French
Revolution, the movement for peace was {220} accelerated. The ideas
that were once current only among philosophers began to spread among
considerable sections of the population. Gradually also pacifism
became rationalistic rather than religious or moral. War was attacked
not because it was evil in the eyes of God but because, like high
taxes, monopolies and tariffs, it was adverse to the economic interests
of nations and peoples. The growth of the doctrine of _laissez-faire_
and of free trade gave a new impetus to the pacifist movement. The
people of the world were looked upon as a myriad of human atoms, whose
welfare did not depend upon the power of the particular State of which
they chanced to form a part, but upon the free enterprise of each and
the unobstructed exchange of products among all these individuals. It
was held that the world would be better if there were no customs
barriers, and free trade on equal terms for all the people of the world
was predicted as a proximate consummation. There would then be no need
for wars or fleets or armies, which cost money and prevented the
progress of humanity. Wars were economically inadvisable. They did
not benefit the sovereign individual, and therefore could not benefit
the nation, which was merely a huge assemblage of individuals.
Like the religious and emotional pacifism which preceded it, this
rationalistic pacifism broke down through its sheer inapplicability to
the facts of life. While the philosophers of the French Revolution
were still proclaiming the advent of peace, the greatest wars until
then in all history were already preparing, and again when in 1851 at
the first World's Exposition in London men began to hope that the era
of peace had at last come, a long period of war was again imminent.
Never was there more talk of peace or hope of peace than in the years
preceding the great conflict of 1914. No wonder many advocates and
{221} prophets of war believe that peace is forever impossible.
"There," wrote the late Prof. J. A. Cramb, "in its specious and
glittering beauty the ideal of Pacificism remains; yet in the long
march of humanity across thousands of years or thousands of centuries
it remains still an ideal, lost in inaccessible distances, as when
first it gleamed across the imagination."[2] "Despite this hubbub of
talk down all the centuries war has continued--absolutely as if not a
word had been said on one side or the other. Man's dreadful toll in
blood has not yet all been paid. The human race bears still this
burden. Declaimed against in the name of religion, in the name of
humanity, in the name of profit-and-loss, war still goes on."[3]
But the fact that war still exists does not at all prove that it is
inevitable, but merely that it has not yet been avoided. Militarists
argue that war is biologically necessary, an ingrained ineradicable
instinct, a necessary evil or an inescapable good, a gift of a stern
god. There is a curious sentimental fatalism about our war prophets,
but in the end their arguments come down to two, that we have always
had wars and that we still have them. It was said many years ago that
"the poor ye have always with you" and to-day poverty on an immense
scale still exists in every part of the planet. Yet we do not despair
of limiting or even of eradicating poverty. Tuberculosis has existed
for centuries and still exists, but to-day we understand the disease
and it is doomed. If war is inevitable it is so for reasons which have
not yet been established. Until it is proved that war accompanies life
and progress as the shadow accompanies the body, men will strive to
eliminate war, however frequent and discouraging their failures.
The cause of these failures of pacifism has been its {222} unreality,
its too confident approach to a difficult problem. Many pacifists have
tended to exhort about war instead of studying it; they have looked
upon it as a thing accursed and irrational, beyond the pale of serious
consideration. They have likened the belief that war has accomplished
good in the past to a faith in witchcraft and other superstitions.
They have tilted at war, as the Mediaeval Church tilted at usury,
without stopping to consider what relation this war-process bore to the
basic facts of social evolution. It was an error to consider war as a
thing in itself instead of an effect of precedent causes. Fortunately
the newer pacifists, who have been rendered cautious by many bitter
disappointments, are changing their approach and seeking to cure war
not directly but by removing its causes. They are striving to outflank
war.
Along this line alone can progress be made. You cannot end war without
changing the international polity which leads to war. The bloody
conflicts between nations, being a symptom of a world maladjustment and
frequently an attempt to cure that maladjustment, can be averted only
by policies which provide some other cure. To destroy war one must
find some alternative regulator or governor of societies.
In their failure to provide such a regulator, or even to recognise that
such a regulator is necessary, lies the vital defect of many of the
peace plans to-day. Pacifism may be either static or dynamic; it may
seek to keep things as they are, to crystallise international society
in its present forms, or on the other hand may base itself on the
assumption that these forms will change. It may address itself to the
problem of stopping the world as one stops a clock, of forbidding
unequal growth of nations, of discountenancing change, or it may seek
to find an outlet and expression for the discontent and unrest which
all growth {223} brings. Pacifism that is static is doomed. Our only
hope lies in a dynamic, evolutionary pacifism, based on a principle of
the ever-changing adjustment of nations to an ever-changing environment.
At the bottom of static pacifism lies a conception somewhat as follows.
The nations of the earth have an interest in maintaining peace, but are
forced, tricked or lured into war by the tyranny or craft of princes
and capitalists or by their own prejudices and sudden passions. Some
nations are peaceful and some, by reason of an evil education, hostile;
wherefore the hostile nations must be restrained by the peaceful, as
the anti-social classes are restrained by the community. Honest
differences of opinion among nations must be arbitrated; angry passions
must be allowed to cool, and the nations must go about unarmed that
there may be no indiscriminate shooting. Given these precautions we
shall have peace.
But it is a peace without change, and such a peace, apart from its
being impossible, is not even desirable. What the static pacifist does
not perceive is that he is hopelessly conservative and stationary in a
swiftly moving world. He would like to build a wall against Time and
Change, to put down his stakes and bid evolution cease. It is this
pathetic clinging to fixity, to a something immutable, that vitiates
his proposals. Nations that hate war prefer it nevertheless to the
preservation of unendurable conditions, and the best conditions, if
they remain unaltered, speedily become unendurable. We should not be
satisfied to-day with the best constitution of the world agreed upon a
hundred years ago, before there were railroads and telegraphs, and when
democracy and nationalism were weaker than to-day. If to-morrow
morning our wisest and most forward-looking men were to re-constitute
Society and petrify it in peace, our descendants would be far from
content. {224} The best heritage that the world can have is not a
perfect constitution but a feasible principle of change.
A dynamic pacifism, on the other hand, must assume that the world is in
change, and that no peace is possible or desirable which does not
permit great international transformations. These transformations
arise from various causes. Thus a candid consideration of the facts of
international life must convince us that in the present era nationality
is a potent, vital and probably a growing force, and that many of the
ambitions and desires of men are mobilised nationally. The nations,
however, grow unequally and are subjected to unequal pressure by their
various environments. As a consequence certain nations become
increasingly dissatisfied with their place in the world, and naturally,
and in the present circumstances wisely, prefer the risks and costs of
war to their present position. Such nations have an interest in war,
if change cannot be otherwise effected. Moreover, it is clear to the
dynamic pacifist that certain classes by the fact of their position in
society are more bellicose than others, that classes grow at unequal
rates and exert a varying influence, and that certain classes may have
a direct and obvious interest in throwing their nation into war.
The neglect of any such dynamic conception of world society is revealed
in all the proposals of the static pacifists. For example, the
proposal to create a United States of Europe is based on a palpably
false analogy with the United States of America, and ignores grossly
the living principle of nationality. The states of Europe are either
nations or are approaching nationhood. They lack the racial,
linguistic and traditional bonds, which made the union of the American
colonies not indeed easy but at least possible. These trans-Atlantic
nations suffer from being jostled one against the other and their keen
sense of {225} national difference is accentuated by economic pressure
and by a perpetual fear of foreign military aggression. To unite all
these nations into one federal state, with a Senate, a House of
Representatives and an impartial Supreme Court, is not only a static
but a mechanical proposal. Nations grow; they are not manufactured.
Equally static is the proposal for immediate and universal disarmament.
Nations will arm so long as they are afraid and so long as they want
something vital that can be obtained only by warfare. Moreover, there
is no principle to determine the permitted armament of each nation or
to designate the country which shall control the international police
that is to enforce disarmament. An unequal disarmament would be unwise
because it would take from the more pacific and civilised nations the
weapons necessary to restrain unorganised and retrograde peoples. The
fundamental defect of the proposal, however, is that it provides no way
by which one nation, injured by another, can secure redress. If there
is to be neither war nor an effective international regulation, what
limits can a nation set to non-military aggression by its neighbour?[4]
The belief that all wars may be averted by arbitration is equally a
static conception. During the last few decades international
arbitration has settled many controversies, which could not be adjusted
by ordinary diplomatic means. Increasingly cases have been submitted
to arbitral decision. {226} The real questions over which nations
clash, however, are not arbitrable. One cannot arbitrate whether
Russia or Germany should control the Balkans, whether the United States
should admit Japanese immigrants, or whether Alsace should go to France
or Germany, or Trieste to Italy or Austria. Arbitration has the
limitations of judicial processes. It is possible to arbitrate
questions concerning the interpretation of treaties and formal
agreements or the application of recognised principles of international
law, but no nation will arbitrate its right to exist. Moreover, the
very fact that arbitration is a judicial process, based upon precedents
and the assumption of the _status quo_ renders it unacceptable to the
nations which are dissatisfied with present arrangements. The
necessity which knows no law respects no arbitration, and no board of
arbitration, however impartial, could decide that one nation should
have more colonies because she needed them or because she was growing,
while another nation must stand aside because feeble and unprogressive.
It is probably not in the interest of the world that Portugal and
Belgium should retain their colonies in Africa, but on what precedent
could these nations be forced to sell? Questions of vital interest
therefore are in truth non-justiciable. No powerful nation will accept
a subordinate position in the world because some arbitral body decides
it may not adopt a certain policy. Arbitration is not a process of
adjustment of growing nations to a changing environment.
But if nations will not gladly accept arbitration where supposedly
vital interests are concerned, can they not be coerced? Out of the
obvious need of such coercion arises a whole series of plans to force
recalcitrant nations to accept mediation, to delay hostilities and even
to abide by the arbitral award. A League to Enforce Peace is a
proposed union of pacific nations to prevent immediate or even {227}
ultimate recourse to war, to force combatants to arbitrate justiciable
disputes and to place the sanction of force behind the decisions of the
nations.
This proposal contains within it an element valuable and indeed
essential to international peace. It frankly assumes the right of a
group of nations to compel a refractory nation by the use of force. It
is far more realistic than the conception of a world peace based upon a
sudden conversion of the nations to the iniquity of war, which is at
bottom an anarchistic conception. For however we deplore a use of
force we cannot rely exclusively upon anything less. Force is not
intrinsically immoral, and without force no morality can prevail. The
compulsion which the parent exercises over a child, and organised
communities over the individual citizen, must equally form the basis of
an international system. One cannot base such a system upon mere moral
suasion, which, though of value as a precedent and complement to force,
is frequently thwarted by the public opinion of each nation, formed
within its borders and protected from outside influence by pride and a
blinding national interest. Outside nations could not have persuaded
Germany that it was unethical to invade Belgium. She would have
appealed to her own moral sense and trusted to the future to make good
her right to attack. Had Germany realised, however, that an invasion
of Belgium would be actively resisted by otherwise neutral nations,
overwhelming in force, she might have been willing to debate the
question.
The immorality of force lies merely in improper use. All through
history compulsion has been exerted for evil as well as for good
purposes. The future of international concord lies, therefore, not in
refraining from force or potential force, not in a purely
_laissez-faire_ policy, but in applying force to uphold a growing body
of international {228} ethics, increasingly recognised by the public
opinion of the world.
But a League of Peace, unless it is _more_ than a league of peace,
suffers from the same defect of not providing an alternative to war.
If Italy is not to attack Austria, some way must be found to protect
Italian interests in the Trentino and Trieste, and if Germany is not to
attack England, some security must be given that German commerce will
be safe and German colonial aspirations not entirely disregarded. If
the nations believe, rightly or wrongly, that their vital interests are
being disregarded in the peace which the League enforces, there will be
defections and revolts. Such a league would then become useless or
worse, since it can only exert an influence so long as it possesses an
immense preponderance of power.
The same defect inheres in a League of Satisfied Powers. Such powers,
preferring the _status quo_ to any probable revision of the affairs of
the world, are in the beginning united by a common conservative
instinct. But no nation is completely satisfied; each wants a
"rectification" here and a "compensation" there. The same
disagreements over the spoils of the world that would be found outside
such a league would also make their appearance within, and in the end
one or more of the satiated nations would join the group of the
unsatisfied, and the league would cease to be a guarantee of peace. It
would die of the endless flux in human affairs.
Similarly static is the proposal that all nations wait, or be compelled
to wait, a set term before beginning hostilities. In many cases such a
compulsory postponement would be advantageous in that it would favour
the mobilisation of the pacific elements in the community and thus tend
to prevent wars being suddenly forced upon the nation against the
national interest by a small, bellicose social class. The {229}
underlying theory, however, is that nations always go to war because
they are hot-headed, whereas in very many cases the decision to wage
war at the proper time is perfectly deliberate and cold-blooded.
Moreover, a compulsory wait before declaring war would alter the
balance of power between the groups of powers, and would adversely
affect certain ready nations, which could therefore only be coerced
into accepting the arrangement. Unless some adequate provision were
made (and it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to make it) to
prevent a nation from preparing for war during the year's wait, the
countries with the largest resources, such as Great Britain, the United
States and Russia, would secure an enormous advantage, while nations
like Germany and Japan would lose. An event in the very recent past
illustrates this point. On August 1, 1914 the German Secretary of
State intimated to the British Ambassador that a failure on the part of
Russia to demobilise would cause Germany to declare instant war.
"Russia had said that her mobilisation did not necessarily imply war,
and that she could perfectly well remain mobilised for months without
making war. This was not the case with Germany. She had the speed and
Russia had the numbers, and the safety of the German Empire forbade
that Germany should allow Russia time to bring up masses of troops from
all parts of her wide dominions."[5] In other words, for Germany to
give up her greater speed of mobilisation would be to destroy her
advantage while assuring that of Russia. Actually, under present
circumstances, such a proposal would tend to preserve the _status quo_
and to aid the satisfied nations. In practice it would take from the
dissatisfied nations the power to alter arrangements, which they feel
are unjust.
{230}
Most of these plans, a federation of nations, a progressive
disarmament, a wider application of the principle of arbitration, and a
League to Enforce Peace, have elements of value, once they are divorced
from purely static conceptions and are united with proposals to effect
some form of progressive adjustment of nations to each other and to the
world. In this effort at adjustment lies the real problem of securing
international peace. So long as the nations have conflicting economic
interests so wide and deep as to make their surrender perilous to the
national future, so long will they find some way to escape from the
restraints of peace. They will drive their armies through any compact
or agreement, adverse to their economic interests, and in the process
will smash whatever machinery has been created for establishing peace.
A dynamic pacifism, therefore, must take into account this factor of
the constantly changing, balancing, opposing economic needs of rival
nations. It must devise not only some rudimentary form of
international government but also arrangements by which the things for
which the nations go to war may peacefully be distributed or utilized
in a manner equitable to all.
[1] For a brief digest of the history of pacifism, see Dr. Edward
Krehbiel, "Nationalism, War and Society," New York, 1916. See also
books cited by him.
[2] "England and Germany," p. 56.
[3] P. 58.
[4] The proposal for disarmament also raises the question of the inner
stability of each nation. In each country there must be some police
force to keep down the anti-social classes and prevent revolution.
Such a force might be small in England or the United States; it would
have to be large and powerful in Russia and Austria, if the subject
nations were to be held down. But a large police force is an army
under a different name. If each disarmed nation were permitted to
decide its own police needs, the whole principle of disarmament would
be whittled away.
[5] British White Paper, No. 138.
{231}