GERMAN CULTURE AND THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH
"Peace cannot become a law of human society, except by passing through the
struggle which will ground life and association on foundations of justice
and liberty, on the wreck of every power which exists not for a principle
but for a dynastic interest."--MAZZINI in 1867.
"The greatest triumph of our time, a triumph in a region loftier than that
of electricity or steam, will be the enthronement of this idea of Public
Right as the governing idea of European policy; as the common and precious
inheritance of all lands, but superior to the passing opinion of any. The
foremost among the nations will be that one which, by its conduct, shall
gradually engender in the minds of the others a fixed belief that it is
just."--GLADSTONE.
§1. _The Two Issues._--The War of 1914 is not simply a war between the
Dual Alliance and the Triple Entente: it is, for Great Britain and
Germany especially, a war of ideas--a conflict between two different and
irreconcilable conceptions of government, society, and progress. An attempt
will be made in this chapter to make clear what these conceptions are, and
to discuss the issue between them as impartially as possible, from the
point of view, not of either of the combatant Powers, but of human
civilisation as a whole.
There are really two great controversies being fought out between Great
Britain and Germany: one about the ends of national policy, and another
about the means to be adopted towards those or any other ends. The latter
is the issue raised by the German Chancellor's plea--not so unfamiliar
on the lips of our own countrymen as we are now tempted to believe--that
"Necessity knows no law." It is the issue of Law and "scraps of paper"
against Force, against what some apologists have called "the Philosophy of
Violence," but which, in its latest form, the French Ambassador has more
aptly christened "the Pedantry of Barbarism." That issue has lately been
brought home, in its full reality, to the British public from the course of
events in Belgium and elsewhere, and need not here be elaborated. Further
words would be wasted. A Power which recognises no obligation but force,
and no law but the sword, which marks the path of its advance by organised
terrorism and devastation, is the public enemy of the civilised world.
But it is a remarkable and significant fact that the policy in which this
ruthless theory is embodied commands the enthusiastic and united support of
the German nation. How can this be explained?
It must be remembered in the first place that the German public does
not see the facts of the situation as we do. On the question of Belgian
neutrality and the events which precipitated the British ultimatum, what
we know to be a false version of the facts is current in Germany, as is
evident from the published statements of the leaders of German thought and
opinion, and it may be many years before its currency is displaced.
This difficulty should serve to remind us how defective the machinery of
civilisation still is. One of the chief functions of law is, not merely to
settle disputes and to enforce its decisions, but to ascertain the true
facts on which alone a settlement can be based. The fact that no tribunal
exists for ascertaining the true facts in disputes between sovereign
governments shows how far mankind still is from an established "rule of
law" in international affairs. Not only is the Hague powerless to give and,
still more, to enforce its decision on the questions at issue between the
European Powers. It has not even the machinery for ascertaining the facts
of the case and bringing them to the notice of neutral governments and
peoples in the name of civilisation as a whole.
But apart from divergent beliefs as to the facts, it is remarkable that
thinking Germany should be in sympathy with the spirit and tone of German
policy, which led, as it appears to us, by an inexorable logic to the
violation of Belgian neutrality and the collision with Great Britain.
But the fact, we are told, admits of easy explanation. Thinking Germany has
fallen a victim to the teachings of Treitschke and Nietzsche--Treitschke
with his Macchiavellian doctrine that "Power is the end-all and be-all of a
State," Nietzsche with his contempt for pity and the gentler virtues, his
admiration for "valour," and his disdain for Christianity.
This explanation is too simple to fit the facts. It may satisfy those who
know no more of Treitschke's brilliant and careful work than the extracts
culled from his occasional writings by General von Bernhardi and the late
Professor Cramb. It may gratify those who, with so many young German
students, forget that Nietzsche, like many other prophets, wrote in
allegory, and that when he spoke of valour he was thinking, not of "shining
armour," but of spiritual conflicts. But careful enquirers, who would
disdain to condemn Macaulay on passages selected by undiscriminating
admirers from his _Essays_, or Carlyle for his frank admiration of Thor
and Odin and the virtues of Valhalla, will ask for a more satisfying
explanation. Even if all that were said about Treitschke and Nietzsche were
true, it would still remain an unsolved question why they and their ideas
should have taken intellectual Germany by storm. But it is not true. What
is true, and what is far more serious, both for Great Britain and for
Europe, is that men like Harnack, Eucken, and Wilamowitz, who would
repudiate all intellectual kinship with Macchiavelli and Nietzsche--men who
are leaders of European thought, and with whom and whose ideas we shall
have to go on living in Europe--publicly support and encourage the policy
and standpoint of a Government which, according to British ideas, has
acted with criminal wickedness and folly, and so totally misunderstood
the conduct and attitude of Great Britain as honestly to regard us as
hypocritically treacherous to the highest interests of civilisation.
That is the real problem; and it is a far more complex and difficult one
than if we had to do with a people which had consciously abandoned the
Christian virtues or consciously embarked on a conspiracy against Belgium
or Great Britain. The utter failure of even the most eminent Germans to
grasp British politics, British institutions, and the British point of
view points to a fundamental misunderstanding, a fundamental divergence
of outlook, between the political ideals of the two countries. It is the
conflict between these ideals which forms the second great issue between
Germany and Great Britain; and on its outcome depends the future of human
civilisation.
§2. _Culture_.--What is the German ideal? What do German thinkers regard
as Germany's contribution to human progress? The answer comes back with a
monotonous reiteration which has already sickened us of the word. It is
_Kultur_, or, as we translate it, culture. Germany's contribution to
progress consists in the spread of her culture.
_Kultur_ is a difficult word to interpret. It means "culture" and a
great deal more besides. Its primary meaning, like that of "culture," is
intellectual and aesthetic: when a German speaks of "Kultur" he is thinking
of such things as language, literature, philosophy, education, art,
science, and the like. Children in German schools are taught a subject
called _Kulturgeschichte_ (culture-history), and under that heading they
are told about German literature, German philosophy and religion, German
painting, German music and so on.
So far, the English and the German uses of the word roughly correspond. We
should probably be surprised if we heard it said that Shakespeare had made
a contribution to English "culture": but, on consideration, we should admit
that he had, though we should not have chosen that way of speaking about
him. But there is a further meaning in the word _Kultur_, which explains
why it is so often on German lips. It means, not only the product of the
intellect or imagination, but the product of the disciplined intellect and
the disciplined imagination. _Kultur_ has in it an element of order, of
organisation, of civilisation. That is why the Germans regard the study of
the "culture" of a country as part of the study of its history. English
school children are beginning to be taught social and industrial history in
addition to the kings and queens and battles and constitutions which used
to form the staple of history lessons. They are being taught, that is, to
see the history of their country, and of its civilisation, in the light
of the life and livelihood of its common people. The German outlook is
different. They look at their history in the light of the achievements of
its great minds, which are regarded as being at once the proof and the
justification of its civilisation. To the question, "What right have you to
call yourselves a civilised country?" an Englishman would reply, "Look at
the sort of people we are, and at the things we have done," and would point
perhaps to the extracts from the letters of private soldiers printed in the
newspapers, or to the story of the growth of the British Empire; a German
would reply (as Germans are indeed replying now), "Look at our achievements
in scholarship and science, at our universities, at our systems of
education, at our literature, our music, and our painting; at our great men
of thought and imagination: at Luther, Dürer, Goethe, Beethoven, Kant."
_Kultur_ then means more than "culture": it means _culture considered as
the most important element in civilisation._ It implies the disciplined
education which alone, in the German view, makes the difference between
the savage and the civilised man. It implies the heritage of intellectual
possessions which, thanks to ordered institutions, a nation is able to hand
down from generation to generation.
We are now beginning to see where the British and German attitudes towards
society and civilisation diverge. Broadly, we may say that the first
difference is that Germany thinks of civilisation in terms of intellect
while we think of it in terms of character. Germany asks, "What do you
know?" "What have you learnt?" and regards our prisoners as uncivilised
because they cannot speak German, and Great Britain as a traitor to
civilisation because she is allied with Russia, a people of ignorant
peasants. We ask, "What have you done?" "What can you do?" and tend
to undervalue the importance of systematic knowledge and intellectual
application.
But we have found no reason as yet for a conflict of ideals. Many English
writers, such as Matthew Arnold, have emphasised the importance of culture
as against character; yet Matthew Arnold's views were widely different from
those of the German professors of to-day. If their sense of the importance
of culture stopped short at this point, we should have much to learn from
Germany, as indeed we have, and no reason to oppose her. What is there then
in the German admiration for culture which involves her in a conflict with
British ideals?
§3. _Culture as a State Product._--The conflict arises out of the alliance
between German culture and the German Government. What British public
opinion resents, in the German attitude, is not culture in itself, about
which it is little concerned, but what we feel to be its unnatural
alliance with military power. It seems to us wicked and hypocritical for a
government which proclaims the doctrine of the "mailed fist" and, like the
ancient Spartans, glories in the perfecting of the machinery of war, to be
at the same time protesting its devotion to culture, and posing as a patron
of the peaceful arts. It is the Kaiser's speeches and the behaviour of the
German Government which have put all of us out of heart with German talk
about culture.
This brings us to a fundamental point of difference between the two
peoples. The close association between culture and militarism, between the
best minds of the nation and the mind of the Government, does not seem
unnatural to a modern German at all. On the contrary, it seems the most
natural thing in the world. It is the bedrock of the German system of
national education. Culture to a German is not only a national possession;
it is also, to a degree difficult for us to appreciate, a State product.
It is a national possession deliberately handed on by the State from
generation to generation, hall-marked and guaranteed, as it were, for the
use of its citizens. When we use the word "culture" we speak of it as an
attribute of individual men and women. Germans, on the other hand, think
of it as belonging to nations as a whole, in virtue of their system of
national education. That is why they are so sure that all Germans possess
culture. They have all had it at school. And it is all the same brand of
culture, because no other is taught. It is the culture with which the
Government wishes its citizens to be equipped. That is why all Germans
tend, not only to know the same facts (and a great many facts too), but
to have a similar outlook on life and similar opinions about Goethe,
Shakespeare and the German Navy. Culture, like military service, is a part
of the State machinery.
Here we come upon the connecting link between culture and militarism. Both
are parts of the great German system of State education. "Side by side with
the influences of German education," wrote Dr. Sadler in 1901,[1] "are
to be traced the influences of German military service. The two sets
of influence interact on one another and intermingle. German education
impregnates the German army with science. The German army predisposes
German education to ideas of organisation and discipline. Military and
educational discipline go hand in hand.... Both are preserved and fortified
by law and custom, and by administrative arrangements skilfully devised
to attain that end. But behind all the forms of organisation (which would
quickly crumble away unless upheld by and expressing some spiritual force),
behind both military and educational discipline, lies the fundamental
principle adopted by Scharnhorst's Committee on Military organisation in
Prussia in 1807: 'All the inhabitants of the State are its defenders by
birth.'"
[Footnote 1: _Board of Education Special Reports,_ vol. ix. p. 43.]
At last we have reached the root of the matter. It is not German culture
which is the source and centre of the ideas to which Great Britain is
opposed: nor yet is it German militarism. Our real opponent is the system
of training and education, out of which both German culture and German
militarism spring. It is the organisation of German public life, and the
"spiritual force" of which that organisation is the outward and visible
expression.
§4. _German and British Ideals of Education._--Let us look at the German
ideal more closely, for it is worthy of careful study. It is perhaps best
expressed in words written in 1830 by Coleridge, who, like other well-known
Englishmen of his day (and our own) was much under the influence of German
ideas. Coleridge, in words quoted by Dr. Sadler, defines the purpose of
national education as "to form and train up the people of the country to
obedient, free, useful, and organisable subjects, citizens and patriots,
living to the benefit of the State and prepared to die in its defence." In
accordance with this conception Prussia was the first of the larger States
in Europe to adopt a universal compulsory system of State education, and
the first also to establish a universal system of military service for its
young men. The rest of Europe perforce followed suit. Nearly every State in
Europe has or professes to have a universal system of education, and every
State except England has a system of universal military service. The Europe
of schools and camps which we have known during the last half century is
the most striking of all the victories of German "culture."
Discipline, efficiency, duty, obedience, public service; these are
qualities that excite admiration everywhere--in the classroom, in the camp,
and in the wider field of life. There is something almost monumentally
impressive to the outsider in the German alliance of School and Army in the
service of the State. Since the days of Sparta and Rome, there has been no
such wonderful governmental disciplinary machine. It is not surprising that
"German organisation" and "German methods" should have stimulated interest
and emulation throughout the civilised world. Discipline seems to many to
be just the one quality of which our drifting world is in need. "If this
war had been postponed a hundred or even fifty years," writes a philosophic
English observer in a private letter, "Prussia would have become our Rome,
worshipping Shakespeare and Byron as Pompey or Tiberius worshipped Greek
literature, and disciplining us. Hasn't it ever struck you what a close
parallel there is between Germany and Rome?" (Here follows a list of
bad qualities which is better omitted.) ... "The good side of it is the
discipline; and the modern world, not having any power external to itself
which it acknowledges, and no men (in masses) having yet succeeded in being
a law to themselves, needs discipline above everything. I don't see where
you will get it under these conditions unless you find some one with an
abstract love of discipline for itself. And where will you find him except
in Prussia? After all, it is a testimony to her that, unlovely as she is,
she gives the law to Germany, and that the South German, though he dislikes
her, accepts the law as good for him." And to show that he appreciates the
full consequences of his words he adds: "If I had to live under Ramsay
MacDonald (provided that he acted as he talks), or under Lieutenant von
Förstner" (the hero of Zabern), "odious as the latter is, for my soul's
good I would choose him: for I think that in the end, I should be less
likely to be irretrievably ruined."
Here is the Prussian point of view, expressed by a thoughtful Englishman
with a wide experience of education, and a deep concern for the moral
welfare of the nation. What have we, on the British side, to set up against
his arguments?
In the first place we must draw attention to the writer's candour in
admitting that a nation cannot adopt Prussianism piecemeal. It must take
it as a whole, its lieutenants included, or not at all. Lieutenant von
Förstner is as typical a product of the Prussian system as the London
policeman is of our own; and if we adopt Prussian or Spartan methods,
we must run the risk of being ruled by him. "No other nation," says Dr.
Sadler, "by imitating a little bit of German organisation can hope thus
to achieve a true reproduction of the spirit of German institutions. The
fabric of its organisation practically forms one whole. That is its merit
and its danger. It must be taken all in all or else left unimitated. And
it is not a mere matter of external organisation.... National institutions
must grow out of the needs and character (and not least out of the
weakness) of the nation which possesses them."
But, taking the system as a whole, there are, it seems to me, three great
flaws in it--flaws so serious and vital as to make the word "education" as
applied to it almost a misnomer. The Prussian system is unsatisfactory,
firstly, because it confuses external discipline with self-control;
secondly, because it confuses regimentation with corporate spirit; thirdly,
because it conceives the nation's duty in terms of "culture" rather than of
character.
Let us take these three points in detail.
The first object of national education is--not anything national at all,
but simply education. It is the training of individual young people. It is
the gradual leading-out (e-ducation), unfolding, expanding, of their
mental and bodily powers, the helping of them to become, not soldiers, or
missionaries of culture, or pioneers of Empire, or even British citizens,
but simply human personalities. "The purpose of the Public Elementary
School," say the opening words of our English code, "is to form and
strengthen the character and to develop the intelligence of the children
entrusted to it." In the performance of this task external discipline is no
doubt necessary. Obedience and consideration for others are not learnt in
a day. But the object of external discipline is to form habits of
self-control which will enable their possessor to become an independent and
self-respecting human being--and incidentally, a good citizen. "If I had
to _live under_ Ramsay MacDonald, or the Prussian Lieutenant," says our
writer, "I would choose the latter, for my soul's good." But our British
system of education does not proceed on the assumption that its pupils
are destined to "live under" any one. Our ideal is that of the free man,
trained in the exercise of his powers and in the command and control of his
faculties, who, like Wordsworth's "Happy Warrior" (a poem which embodies
the best British educational tradition):
... Through the heat of conflict, keeps the law
In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw.
Neglect for the claims of human personality both amongst pupils and
teachers is the chief danger of a State system of education. The State
is always tempted to put its own claims first and those of its citizens
second--to regard the citizen as existing for the State, instead of the
State for its citizens. It is one of the ironies of history that no man was
more alive to this danger than Wilhelm von Humboldt, the gifted creator of
the Prussian system of education. As the motto of one of his writings he
adopted the words, "_Against the governmental mania, the most fatal disease
of modern governments_," and when, contrary to his own early principles,
he undertook the organisation of Prussian education he insisted that
"headmasters should be left as free a hand as possible in all matters of
teaching and organisation." But the Prussian system was too strong for him
and his successors, and his excellent principles now survive as no more
than pious opinions. The fact is that in an undemocratic and feudal State
such as Germany then was, and still largely is, respect for the personality
of the individual is confined to the upper ranks of society.
"I do not know how it is in foreign countries," says one of Goethe's
heroes,[1] "but in Germany it is only the nobleman who can secure a certain
amount of universal or, if I may say so, _personal_ education. An ordinary
citizen can learn to earn his living and, at the most, train his intellect;
but, do what he will, he loses his personality.... He is not asked, 'What
are you?' but only, 'What have you? what attainments, what knowledge, what
capacities, what fortune?' ... The nobleman is to act and to achieve.
The common citizen is to carry out orders. He is to develop individual
faculties, in order to become useful, and it is a fundamental assumption
that there is no harmony in his being, nor indeed is any permissible,
because, in order to make himself serviceable in one way, he is forced
to neglect everything else. The blame for this distinction is not to be
attributed to the adaptability of the nobleman or the weakness of the
common citizen. It is due to the constitution of society itself." Much has
changed in Germany since Goethe wrote these words, but they still ring
true. And they have not been entirely without their echo in Great Britain
itself.[2]
[Footnote 1: Wilhelm Meister's _Lehrjahre_, Book v. chapter iii.]
[Footnote 2: The contrast which has been drawn in the preceding pages, as
working-class readers in particular will understand, is between the _aims_,
not the achievements, of German and British education. The German aims are
far more perfectly achieved in practice than the British. Neither the law
nor the administration of British education can be acquitted of "neglect
for the claims of human personality." The opening words of the English
code, quoted on p. 359 above, are, alas! not a statement of fact but
an aspiration. We have hardly yet begun in England to realise the
possibilities of educational development along the lines of the British
ideal, both as regards young people and adults. If we learn the lesson
of the present crisis aright, the war, so far from being a set-back
to educational progress, should provide a new stimulus for effort and
development.]
But man cannot live for himself alone. He is a corporate being; and,
personality or no personality, he has to fit into a world of fellow-men
with similar human claims. The second charge against the German system is
that it ignores the value of human fellowship. It regards the citizens of a
country as "useful and organisable subjects" rather than as fellow-members
of a democracy, bound together by all the various social ties of
comradeship and intercourse.
The Prussian system, with its elaborate control and direction from above,
dislikes the free play of human groupings, and discourages all spontaneous
or unauthorised associations. Schoolboy "societies," for instance, are in
Germany an evil to be deplored and extirpated, not, as with us, a symptom
of health and vigour, to be sympathetically watched and encouraged.
Instead, there is a direct inculcation of patriotism, a strenuous and
methodical training of each unit for his place in the great State machine.
We do not so read human nature. Our British tendency is to develop habits
of service and responsibility through a devotion to smaller and more
intimate associations, to build on a foundation of lesser loyalties and
duties. We do not conceive it to be the function of the school to _teach_
patriotism or to _teach_ fellowship. Rather we hold that good education
_is_ fellowship, _is_ citizenship, in the deepest meaning of those words;
that to discover and to exercise the responsibilities of membership in a
smaller body is the best training for a larger citizenship. A school, a
ship, a club, a Trade Union, any free association of Englishmen, is all
England in miniature. "To be attached to the subdivision, to love the
little platoon we belong to in society," said Burke long ago, "is the first
principle, the germ, as it were, of public affections. It is the first
link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country
and mankind.... We begin our public affections in our families. No cold
relation is a zealous citizen. We pass on to our neighbourhoods, to our
habitual provincial connections. These are inns and resting-places... so
many images of the great country, in which the heart found something which
it could fill."[1]
[Footnote 1: _Reflections on the French Revolution_, pp. 292, 494 (of vol.
iii. of _Collected Works_, ed. 1899).]
There is one fairly safe test for a system of education: What do its
victims think of it? "In Prussia," says Dr. Sadler, "a schoolboy seems to
regard his school as he might regard a railway station--a convenient and
necessary establishment, generally ugly to look at, but also, for its
purpose efficient." The illustration is an apt one: for a Prussian school
is too often, like a railway station, simply a point of departure,
something to be got away from as soon as possible. "In England a boy who
is at a good secondary school cares for it as an officer cares for his
regiment or as a sailor cares for his ship," or, we may add, as a Boy Scout
cares for his Troop.[1]
[Footnote 1: _Special Reports_, ix. p. 113. Dr. Sadler's article deals with
secondary schools only. Unfortunately, no one can claim that the idea of
fellowship is as prominent in English elementary schools, or even in all
secondary schools, as the quotation might suggest.]
Democracy and discipline, fellowship and freedom, are in fact not
incompatible at all. They are complementary: and each can only be at
its best when it is sustained by the other. Only a disciplined and
self-controlled people can be free to rule itself, and only a free people
can know the full meaning and happiness of fellowship.
§5. _German and British Ideals of Civilisation._--Lastly, the German system
regards national "culture" rather than national character as the chief
element in civilisation and the justification of its claim to a dominant
place in the world. This view is so strange to those who are used to
present-day British institutions that it is hard to make clear what it
means. Civilisation is a word which, with us, is often misused and often
misunderstood. Sometimes we lightly identify it with motor cars and
gramophones and other Western contrivances with which individual traders
and travellers dazzle and bewilder the untutored savage. Yet we are seldom
tempted to identify it, like the Germans, with anything narrowly national;
and in our serious moments we recognise that it is too universal a force to
be the appanage of either nations or individuals. For to us, when we ask
ourselves its real meaning, civilisation stands for neither language nor
culture nor anything intellectual at all. It stands for something moral and
social and political. It means, in the first place, the establishment and
enforcement of the Rule of Law, as against anarchy on the one hand and
tyranny on the other; and, secondly, on the basis of order and justice,
the task of making men fit for free institutions, the work of guiding and
training them to recognise the obligations of citizenship, to subordinate
their own personal interests or inclinations to the common welfare, the
"commonwealth." That is what is meant when it is claimed that Great Britain
has done a "civilising" work both in India and in backward Africa. The
Germans reproach and despise us, we are told,[1] for our failure to spread
"English culture" in India. That has not been the purpose of British rule,
and Englishmen have been foolish in so far as they have presumed to attempt
it: England has to learn from Indian culture as India from ours. But to
have laid for India the foundations on which alone a stable society could
rest, to have given her peace from foes without and security within, to
have taught her, by example, the kinship of Power and Responsibility, to
have awakened the social conscience and claimed the public services of
Indians in the village, the district, the province, the nation, towards the
community of which they feel themselves to be members, to have found India
a continent, a chaos of tribes and castes, and to have helped her to
become a nation--that is not a task of English culture: it is a task of
civilisation.
[Footnote 1: For evidence of this see Cramb's _Germany and England_, p.
25.]
Law, Justice, Responsibility, Liberty, Citizenship--the words are
abstractions, philosophers' phrases, destitute, it might seem, of living
meaning and reality. There is no such thing as English Justice, English
Liberty, English Responsibility. The qualities that go to the making of
free and ordered institutions are not national but universal. They are no
monopoly of Great Britain. They are free to be the attributes of any race
or any nation. They belong to civilised humanity as a whole. They are part
of the higher life of the human race.
As such the Germans, if they recognised them at all, probably regarded
them. They could not see in them the binding power to keep a great
community of nations together. They could not realise that Justice and
Responsibility, if they rightly typify the character of British rule,
must also typify the character of British rulers; and that community of
character expressed in their institutions and worked into the fibre
of their life may be a stronger bond between nations than any mere
considerations of interest. Educated Indians would find it hard to explain
exactly why, on the outbreak of the war, they found themselves eager to
help to defend British rule. But it seems clear that what stirred them most
was not any consideration of English as against German culture, or any
merely material calculations, but a sudden realisation of the character of
that new India which the union between Great Britain and India, between
Western civilisation and Eastern culture, is bringing into being, and a
sense of the indispensable need for the continuance of that partnership.[1]
[Footnote 1: The reader will again understand that it is British aims
rather than British achievements which are spoken of. That British rule
is indispensable to Indian civilisation is indeed a literal fact to which
Indian opinion bears testimony; and it is the conduct and character of
generations of British administrators which have helped to bring this sense
of partnership about. But individual Englishmen in India are often far
from understanding, or realising in practice, the purpose of British rule.
Similarly, the growth of a sense of Indian nationality, particularly in the
last few years, is a striking and important fact. But it would be unwise to
underestimate the gigantic difficulties with which this growing national
consciousness has to contend. The greatest of these is the prevalence
of caste-divisions, rendering impossible the free fellowship and social
intercourse which alone can be the foundation of a sense of common
citizenship. Apart from this there are, according to the census,
forty-three races in India, and twenty-three languages in ordinary use.]
It is just this intimate union between different nations for the
furtherance of the tasks of civilisation which it seems so difficult
for the German mind to understand. "Culture," with all its intimate
associations, its appeal to language, to national history and traditions,
and to instinctive patriotism, is so much simpler and warmer a conception:
it seems so much easier to fight for Germany than to fight for Justice in
the abstract, or for Justice embodied in the British Commonwealth. That is
why even serious German thinkers, blinded by the idea of culture, expected
the break-up of the British Empire. They could imagine Indians giving their
lives for India, Boers for a Dutch South Africa, Irishmen for Ireland
or Ulstermen for Ulster; but the deeper moral appeal which has thrilled
through the whole Empire, down to its remotest island dependency, lay
beyond their ken.
Let us look a little more closely at the German idea of national culture
rather than national character as the chief element in civilisation. We
shall see that it is directly contrary to the ideals which inspire
and sustain the British Commonwealth, and practically prohibits that
association of races and peoples at varying levels of social progress which
is its peculiar task.
"Culture," in the German idea, is the justification of a nation's
existence. Nationality has no other claim. Goethe, Luther, Kant, and
Beethoven are Germany's title-deeds. A nation without a culture has no
right to a "place in the sun." "History," says Wilamowitz in a lecture
delivered in 1898, "knows nothing of any right to exist on the part of a
people or a language without a culture. If a people becomes dependent on a
foreign culture" (_i.e._ in the German idea, on a foreign civilisation) "it
matters little if its lower classes speak a different language: they, too
... must eventually go over to the dominant language.... Wisely to further
this necessary organic process is a blessing to all parties; violent
haste will only curb it and cause reactions. Importunate insistence on
Nationality has never anywhere brought true vitality into being, and often
destroyed vitality; but the superior Culture which, sure of its inner
strength, throws her doors wide open, can win men's hearts."[1] In the
light of a passage like this, from the most distinguished representative of
German humanism, it is easier to grasp the failure of educated Germany to
understand the sequel of the South African War, or the aspirations of the
Slav peoples, or to stigmatise the folly of their statesmen in Poland,
Denmark, Alsace-Lorraine, and Belgium. "Importunate insistence on
Nationality"--the words come home to us now with a new meaning when we
learn that in Belgium, now perforce "dependent on a foreign culture,"
babies are registered under German names and newspapers printed in "the
dominant language," and that already "forty newspaper vendors in Brussels
have been sentenced to long terms of hard labour in German prisons for
selling English, French, and Belgian newspapers."[2] "Our fearless German
warriors," writes the leading German dramatist, Gerhart Hauptmann,[3]
"are _well aware of the reasons for which they have taken the field_. No
illiterates will be found among them. Many of them, besides shouldering
their muskets, carry their Goethe's _Faust_, some work of Schopenhauer, a
Bible, or a Homer in their knapsacks." Such is a serious German writer's
idea of the way in which civilisation is diffused!
[Footnote 1: _Speeches and Lectures_, pp. 147-148 (1913 edition).]
[Footnote 2: Daily Papers, October 12, 1914 (Exchange Telegram from
Rotterdam).]
[Footnote 3: Letter quoted in the _Westminster Gazette._]
With such a philosophy of human progress as this, German thinkers and
statesmen look out into the future and behold nothing but conflict--eternal
conflict between rival national "cultures," each seeking to impose its
domination. "In the struggle between Nationalities," writes Prince
Bülow,[1] in defence of his Polish policy, putting into a cruder form the
philosophy of Wilamowitz, "one nation is the hammer and the other the
anvil; one is the victor and the other the vanquished. It is a law of life
and development in history that where two national civilisations meet they
fight for supremacy."
[Footnote 1: _Imperial Germany_, p. 245 (1st ed.).]
Here we have the necessary and logical result of the philosophy of culture.
In the struggle between cultures no collaboration, no compromise even, is
possible. German is German: Flemish is Flemish: Polish is Polish: French is
French. Who is to decide which is the "more civilised," which is the fitter
to survive? Force alone can settle the issue. A Luther and Goethe may be
the puppets pitted in a contest of culture against Maeterlinck and Victor
Hugo. But it is Krupp and Zeppelin and the War-Lord that pull the strings.
As Wilamowitz reminds us, it was the Roman legions, not Virgil and Horace,
that stamped out the Celtic languages and romanised Western Europe. It is
the German army, two thousand years later, that is to germanise it. It is
an old, old theory; Prussia did not invent it, nor even Rome. "You know as
well as we do," said the Athenians in 416 B.C. to the representatives of
a small people of that day,[1] "that right, as the world goes, is only in
question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the
weak suffer what they must"; and they went on, like the Kaiser, to claim
the favour of the gods, "neither our pretensions nor our conduct being
in any way contrary to what men believe of the gods, or practise amongst
themselves." There is, in fact, to be no Law between Nations but the Rule
of the Stronger.
[Footnote 1: _Thucydides_, Book v. 89 and 105.]
§6. _The Principle of the Commonwealth_.--Such seems to many the meaning
of the present European situation--a stern conflict between nations and
cultures, to be decided by force of arms. The bridges between the nations
seem broken down, and no one can tell when they will be repaired. The hopes
that had gathered round international movements, the cosmopolitan dreams
of common action between the peoples across the barriers of States and
Governments, seem to have vanished into limbo; and the enthusiastic
dreamers of yesterday are the disillusioned soldiers and spectators of
to-day. Nationality, that strange, inarticulate, unanalysable force that
can call all men to her tents in the hour of crisis and danger, seems to
have overthrown the international forces of to-day, the Socialists, the
Pacifists, and, strongest of all, the Capitalists, as it overthrew Napoleon
and his dreams of Empire a hundred years ago. What Law is there but force
that can decide the issue between nation and nation? And, in the absence
of a Law, what becomes of all our hopes for international action, for the
future of civilisation and the higher life of the human race?
But in truth the disillusionment is as premature as the hopes that preceded
it. We are still far off from the World-State and the World-Law which
formed the misty ideal of cosmopolitan thinkers. But only those who are
blind to the true course of human progress can fail to see that the day of
the Nation-State is even now drawing to a close in the West. There is in
fact at present working in the world a higher Law and a better patriotism
than that of single nations and cultures, a Law and a patriotism that
override and transcend the claims of Nationality in a greater, a more
compelling, and a more universal appeal. The great States or Powers of
to-day, Great Britain, the United States, France, and (if they had eyes
to sec it) Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary, are not Nation-States but
composite States--States compacted of many nationalities united together by
a common citizenship and a common law. Great Britain, the United States,
the German Empire, and Austria-Hungary bear in their very names the
reminder of the diverse elements of which they are composed; but France
with her great African Empire, and Russia with her multitudinous
populations, from Poland to the Pacific, from Finland to the Caucasus, are
equally composite. In each of these great States nations have been united
under a common law; and where the wisdom of the central government has not
"broken the bruised reed or quenched the smoking flax" of national life,
the nations have been not only willing but anxious to join in the work
of their State. Nations, like men, were made not to compete but to work
together; and it is so easy, so simple, to win their good-hearted devotion.
It takes all sorts of men, says the old proverb, to make a world. It takes
all sorts of nations to make a modern State. "The combination of different
nations in one State is as necessary a condition of civilised life as the
combination of men in society. ... It is in the cauldron of the State that
the fusion takes place by which the vigour, the knowledge, and the capacity
of one portion of mankind may be communicated to another.... If we take the
establishment of liberty for the realisation of moral duties to be the end
of civil society, we must conclude that those States are substantially the
most perfect which, like the British and Austrian Empires, include various
distinct nationalities without oppressing them." So wrote Lord Acton,
the great Catholic historian, fifty years ago, when the watchwords of
Nationality were on all men's lips, adding, in words that were prophetic of
the failure of the Austrian and the progress of the British Commonwealth
of Nations: "The coexistence of several nations under the same State _is a
test_ as well as the best security _of its freedom_. It is also one of the
chief instruments of civilisation; and, as such, it is in the natural and
providential order, and indicates a state of greater advancement than the
national unity which is the ideal of modern liberalism."[1]
[Footnote 1: Essay on Nationality, in _The History of Freedom and other
Essays_, pp. 290, 298.]
Of the Great Powers which between them control the destinies of
civilisation Great Britain is at once the freest, the largest, and the
most various. If the State is a "cauldron" for mingling "the vigour, the
knowledge, and the capacity" of the portions of mankind--or if, to use an
apter metaphor, it is a body whose perfection consists in the very variety
of the functions of its several members--there has never been on the earth
a political organism like the British Empire. Its 433 million inhabitants,
from Great Britain to Polynesia, from India and Egypt to Central Africa,
are drawn from every division of the human race. Cut a section through
mankind, and in every layer there will be British citizens, living under
the jurisdiction of British law. Here is something to hearten those who
have looked in vain to the Hague. While international law has been
brought to a standstill through the absence of a common will and a common
executive, Great Britain has thrown a girdle of law around the globe.
§7. _The Future of Civilisation_.--What hopes dare we cherish, in this hour
of conflict, for the future of civilisation?
The great, the supreme task of human politics and statesmanship is to
extend the sphere of Law. Let others labour to make men cultured or
virtuous or happy. These are the tasks of the teacher, the priest, and the
common man. The statesman's task is simpler. It is to enfold them in a
jurisdiction which will enable them to live the life of their souls'
choice. The State, said the Greek philosophers, is the foundation of the
good life; but its crown rises far above mere citizenship. "There where the
State ends," cries Nietzsche,[1] echoing Aristotle and the great tradition
of civilised political thought, "there _men begin_. There, where the State
ends, look thither, my brothers! Do you not see the rainbow and the bridge
to the Overman?" Ever since organised society began, the standards of the
individual, the ideals of priest and teacher, the doctrines of religion and
morality, have outstripped the practice of statesmanship. For the polestar
of the statesman has not been love, but law. His not the task of exhorting
men to love one another, but the simpler duty of enforcing the law, "Thou
shalt not kill." And in that simple, strenuous, necessary task statesmen
and political thinkers have watched the slow extension of the power of Law,
from the family to the tribe, from the tribe to the city, from the city to
the nation, from the nation to the Commonwealth. When will Law take its
next extension? When will warfare, which is murder between individuals and
"rebellion" between groups of citizens, be equally preventable between
nations by the common law of the world?
[Footnote 1: _Also sprach Zarathustra_, Speech xi. (end).]
The answer is simple. When the world has a common will, and has created a
common government to express and enforce that will.
In the sphere of science and invention, of industry and economics, as
Norman Angell and others have taught us, the world is already one Great
Society. For the merchant, the banker, and the stockbroker political
frontiers have been broken down. Trade and industry respond to the
reactions of a single, world-wide, nervous system. Shocks and panics pass
as freely as airmen over borders and custom-houses. And not "big business"
only, but the humblest citizen, in his search for a livelihood, finds
himself caught in the meshes of the same world-wide network. "The widow
who takes in washing," says Graham Wallas,[1] in his deep and searching
analysis of our contemporary life, "fails or succeeds according to her
skill in choosing starch or soda or a wringing machine under the influence
of half a dozen competing world-schemes of advertisement.... The English
factory girl who is urged to join her Union, the tired old Scotch
gatekeeper with a few pounds to invest, the Galician peasant when the
emigration agent calls, the artisan in a French provincial town whose
industry is threatened by a new invention, all know that unless they find
their way among world-wide facts, which only reach them through misleading
words, they will be crushed." The Industrial Revolution of the past
century, steam-power and electricity, the railway and the telegraph, have
knit mankind together, and made the world one place.
[Footnote 1: _The Great Society_ (1914), p. 4.]
But this new Great Society is as yet formless and inarticulate. It is not
only devoid of common leadership and a common government; it lacks even the
beginnings of a common will, a common emotion, and a common consciousness.
Of the Great Society, consciously or unconsciously, we must all perforce be
members; but of the Great State, the great World-Commonwealth, we do not
yet discern the rudiments. The economic organisation of the world has
outstripped the development of its citizenship and government: the economic
man, with his farsighted vision and scientific control of the resources
of the world, must sit by and see the work of his hands laid in ashes by
contending governments and peoples. No man can say how many generations
must pass before the platitudes of the market and the exchange pass into
the current language of politics.
§8. _The Two Roads of Advance: Inter-State Action and Common
Citizenship_.--In the great work which lies before the statesmen and
peoples of the world for the extension of law and common citizenship and
the prevention of war there are two parallel lines of advance.
One road lies through the development of what is known as International,
but should more properly be called _Inter-State Law_, through the revival,
on a firmer and broader foundation, of the Concert of Europe conceived by
the Congress of Vienna just a hundred years ago--itself a revival, on
a secular basis, of the great mediaeval ideal of an international
Christendom, held together by Christian Law and Christian ideals. That
ideal faded away for ever at the Reformation, which grouped Europe into
independent sovereign States ruled by men responsible to no one outside
their own borders. It will never be revived on an ecclesiastical basis. Can
we hope for its revival on a basis of modern democracy, modern nationality,
and modern educated public opinion? Can Inter-State Law, hitherto a mere
shadow of the majestic name it bears, almost a matter of convention and
etiquette, with no permanent tribunal to interpret it, and no government
to enforce it, be enthroned with the necessary powers to maintain justice
between the peoples and governments of the world?
Such a Law the statesmen of Great Britain and Russia sought to impose on
Europe in 1815, to maintain a state of affairs which history has shown to
have been intolerable to the European peoples. There are those who hope
that the task can be resumed, on a better basis, at the next Congress.
"Shall we try again," writes Professor Gilbert Murray,[1] "to achieve
Castlereagh's and Alexander's ideal of a permanent Concert, pledged to make
collective war upon the peace-breaker? Surely we must. We must, at all
costs and in spite of all difficulties, because the alternative means
such unspeakable failure. We must learn to agree, we civilised nations of
Europe, or else we must perish. I believe that the chief council of wisdom
here is to be sure to go far enough. We need a permanent Concert, perhaps a
permanent Common Council, in which every awkward problem can be dealt with
before it has time to grow dangerous, and in which outvoted minorities must
accustom themselves to giving way."
[Footnote 1: _Hibbert Journal,_ Oct. 1914, p. 77.]
Other utterances by public men, such as Mr. Roosevelt and our own Prime
Minister, might be cited in the same sense; but Professor Murray's has been
chosen because he has had the courage to grasp the nettle. In his words the
true position is quite clearly set forth. If Inter-State Law is to become
a reality we must "be sure to go far enough." There is no half-way house
between Law and no Law, between Government and no Government, between
Responsibility and no Responsibility. If the new Concert is to be effective
it must be able to compel the submission of all "awkward problems" and
causes of quarrel to its permanent Tribunal at the Hague or elsewhere; and
it must be able to enforce the decision of its tribunal, employing for
the purpose, if necessary, the armed forces of the signatory Powers as an
international police. "Out-voted minorities must accustom themselves to
giving way." It is a bland and easy phrase; but it involves the whole
question of world-government. "Men must accustom themselves not to demand
an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," the earliest law-givers might
have said, when the State first intervened between individuals to make
itself responsible for public order. Peace between the Powers, as between
individuals, is, no doubt, a habit to which cantankerous Powers "must
accustom themselves." But they will be sure to do so if there is a Law,
armed with the force to be their schoolmaster towards peaceable habits. In
other words, they will do so because they have surrendered one of the most
vital elements in the independent life of a State--the right of conducting
its own policy--to the jurisdiction of a higher Power. An Inter-State
Concert, with a Judiciary of its own and an Army and Navy under its own
orders, is, in fact, not an Inter-State Concert at all; it is a new State:
it is, in fact, the World-State. There is no middle course between Law and
no Law: and the essence of Statehood, as we have seen, is a Common Law.
Will this new State have the other attributes of Government--a Common
Legislature and a Common Executive--as well as a Common Judiciary? Let us
go back to Professor Murray's words. He speaks of "outvoted minorities."
Let us suppose the refractory country to be Great Britain, outvoted on some
question relating to sea-power. Of whom will the outvoted minority consist?
Of the British members on the "Common Council" of the Concert. But the
question at once arises, what are the credentials of these British members?
Whom do they represent? To whom are they responsible? If they are the
representatives of the British people and responsible to the democracy
which sent them, how can they be expected to "accustom themselves to giving
way"--perhaps to a majority composed of the representatives of undemocratic
governments? Their responsibility is, not to the Concert, but to their
own Government and people. They are not the minority members of a
democratically-elected Council of their own fellow-citizens. They are the
minority members of a heterogeneous Council towards which they owe no
allegiance and recognise no binding responsibility. There is no half-way
house between Citizenship and no Citizenship, between Responsibility and
no Responsibility. No man and no community can serve two masters. When the
point of conflict arises men and nations have to make the choice where
their duty lies. Not the representatives of Great Britain on the
International Concert, but the people of Great Britain themselves would
have to decide whether their real allegiance, as citizens, was due to the
World-State or to their own Commonwealth: they would find themselves at the
same awful parting of the ways which confronted the people of the Southern
States in 1861. When at the outbreak of the Civil War General Lee was
offered by Lincoln the Commandership of the Northern armies and refused
it, to become the Commander-in-Chief on the side of the South, he did so
because "he believed," as he told Congress after the war, "that the act of
Virginia in withdrawing herself from the United States carried him along
with it as a citizen of Virginia, and that _her_ laws and acts were binding
on him." In other words, unless the proposed Common Council is to be made
something more than a Council of the delegates of sovereign States (as the
Southern States believed themselves to be till 1861), a deadlock sooner or
later is almost inevitable, and the terrible and difficult question--so
familiar to Americans and recently to ourselves on the smaller stage of
Ulster--of the right of secession and the coercion of minorities
will arise. But if the Common Council is framed in accordance with a
Constitution which binds its representatives to accept its decisions and
obey its government, then the World-State, with a World-Executive, will
already have come into being. There will be no more war, but only Rebellion
and Treason.
Such is the real meaning of proposals to give a binding sanction to the
decisions of an Inter-State Concert. Anything short of this--treaties and
arbitration-agreements based upon inter-State arrangements without any
executive to enforce them--may give relief for a time and pave the way
for further progress, but can in itself provide no permanent security, no
satisfactory justification for the neglect of defensive measures by the
various sovereign governments on behalf of their peoples. Mr. Bryan, for
the United States, has within the last eighteen months concluded twenty-six
general arbitration treaties with different Governments, and may yet
succeed in his ambition of signing treaties with all the remainder. Yet no
one imagines that, when the immunity of the United States from attack is
guaranteed by the promise of every Government in the world, America will
rely for her defence upon those promises alone.
In discussing proposals for a European Council, then, we must be quite
sure to face all that it means. But let us not reject Professor Murray's
suggestion off-hand because of its inherent difficulties: for that men
should be discussing such schemes at all marks a significant advance in our
political thought. Only let us be quite clear as to what they presuppose.
They presuppose the supremacy, in the collective mind of civilised mankind,
of Law over Force, a definite supremacy of what may be called the civilian
as against the military ideal, not in a majority of States, but in every
State powerful enough to defy coercion. They presuppose a world map
definitely settled on lines satisfactory to the national aspirations of the
peoples. They presuppose a _status quo_ which is not simply maintained,
like that after 1815, because it is a legal fact and its disturbance would
be inconvenient to the existing rulers, but because it is inherently
equitable.[1] They presuppose a similar democratic basis of citizenship
and representation among the component States. They presuppose, lastly,
an educated public opinion incomparably less selfish, less ignorant, less
unsteady, less materialistic, and less narrowly national than has been
prevalent hitherto. Let us work and hope for these things: let us use our
best efforts to remove misunderstandings and promote a sense of common
responsibilities and common trusteeship for civilisation between the
peoples of all the various sovereign States; but meanwhile let us work
also, with better hopes of immediate if less ambitious successes, along the
other parallel road of advance.
[Footnote 1: The same applies to proposals for ensuring permanent peace in
the industrial sphere. Neither capital nor labour will abide by "scraps
of paper" if they do not feel the _status quo (i.e._ the conditions under
which wage-contracts are made) to be equitable and inherently just.]
The other road may seem, in this hour of dreams and disaster, of extremes
of hope and disillusionment, a long and tedious track: it is the old slow
high road of civilisation, not the short cut across the fields. It looks
forward to abiding results, not through the mechanical co-operation of
governments, but through the growth of an organic citizenship, through the
education of the nations themselves to a sense of common duty and a common
life. It looks forward, not to the definite establishment, in our day, of
the World-State, but only to the definite refutation of the wicked
theory of the mutual incompatibility of nations. It looks forward to the
expression in the outward order of the world's government of what we may
call "the Principle of the Commonwealth," of Lord Acton's great principle
of the State composed of free nations, of the State as a living body which
lives through the organic union and free activity of its several national
members. And it finds its immediate field of action in the deepening and
extension of the obligations of citizenship among the peoples of the great,
free, just, peace-loving, supra-national Commonwealths whose patriotism has
been built up, not by precept and doctrine, but on a firm foundation of
older loyalties.
The principle of the Commonwealth is not a European principle: it is a
world-principle. It does not proceed upon the expectation of a United
States of Europe; for all the Great Powers of Europe except Austria-Hungary
(and some of the smaller, such as Holland, Belgium, and Portugal) are
extra-European Powers also. Indeed if we contract our view, with Gladstone
and Bismarck and the statesmen of the last generation, to European issues
alone, we shall be ignoring the chief political problem of our age--the
contact of races and nations with wide varieties of social experience and
at different levels of civilisation. It is this great and insistent problem
(call it the problem of East and West, or the problem of the colour-line)
in all its difficult ramifications, political, social, and, above all,
economic, which makes the development of the principle of the Commonwealth
the most pressing political need of our age. For the problems arising out
of the contact of races and nations can never be adjusted either by the
wise action of individuals or by conflict and warfare; they can only be
solved by fair and deliberate statesmanship within the bosom of a single
State, through the recognition by both parties of a higher claim than their
own sectional interest--the claim of a common citizenship and the interest
of civilisation.[1] It is here, in the union and collaboration of diverse
races and peoples, that the principle of the Commonwealth finds its
peculiar field of operation. Without this principle, and without its
expression, however imperfect, in the British Empire, the world would be in
chaos to-day.
[Footnote 1: The most recent example of this is the settlement of the very
difficult dispute between India and South Africa.]
We cannot predict the political development of the various Great Powers who
between them control the destinies of civilisation. We cannot estimate
the degree or the manner in which France, freed at last from nearer
preoccupations, will seek to embody in her vast dominion the great
civilising principles for which her republic stands. We cannot foretell
the issue of the conflict of ideas which has swayed to and fro in Russia
between the British and the Prussian method of dealing with the problem of
nationality. Germany, Italy, Japan--here, too, we are faced by enigmas.
One other great Commonwealth remains besides the British. Upon the United
States already lies the responsibility, voluntarily assumed and, except
during a time of internal crisis,[1] successfully discharged, of securing
peace from external foes for scores of millions of inhabitants of the
American continent. Yet with the progress of events her responsibilities
must yearly enlarge: for both the immigrant nationalities within and the
world-problems without her borders seem to summon her to a deeper education
and to wider obligations.
[Footnote 1: French occupation of Mexico, 1862, during the American Civil
War, when the Monroe Doctrine was temporarily in abeyance.]
But upon the vast, ramifying, and inchoate Commonwealth of Great Britain
lies the heaviest responsibility. It is a task unequally shared between
those of her citizens who are capable of discharging it. Her task within
the Commonwealth is to maintain the common character and ideals and to
adjust the mutual relations of one quarter of the human race. Her task
without is to throw her weight into the scales of peace, and to uphold and
develop the standard and validity of inter-State agreements. It is a task
which requires, even at this time of crisis, when, by the common sentiment
of her citizens, the real nature and purpose of the Commonwealth have
become clear to us, the active thoughts of all political students. For to
bring home to all within her borders who bear rule and responsibility, from
the village headman in India and Nigeria, the Basutu chief and the
South Sea potentate, to the public opinion of Great Britain and the
self-governing Dominions, the nature of the British Commonwealth, and the
character of its citizenship and ideals, and to study how those ideals
may be better expressed in its working institutions and executive
government--that is a task to which the present crisis beckons the minds
of British citizens, a task which Britain owes not only to herself but to
mankind.
_Note_.--A friendly critic who saw this chapter in MS. remarked: "I think
the author has been very successful in ignoring some of the shady methods
by which the British Empire has been extended." The criticism is not
strictly relevant to the subject of the chapter, but as it may occur to
other readers it may be well to deal with it in a brief note. I would
answer:
(1) The "shady methods" of which he speaks were not the result of British
Imperialism, or of a desire for conquest on the part of the British
State. They were the result, melancholy but inevitable, of the contact of
individuals and races at different levels of development. This contact
between the stronger and the weaker (which can be illustrated from what is
said about the sandalwood traders in the New Hebrides on p. 215 above) was
the direct result of the explorations of the sixteenth century, which threw
the seas of the world open to Western pioneers and traders. The extension
of the authority of Western _governments_ (Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch,
French, and British), and the collisions between them, followed inevitably
on the activities of their citizens, as has been pointed out on p. 216
above. All the Western governments have made mistakes in dealing with this
unfamiliar situation; but the wise course for democratic public opinion,
instead of railing at "Imperialism," would seem to be to familiarise itself
with its problems and control its injurious tendencies.
(2) In any case, the mistakes of the past do not entitle us to wash our
hands of responsibilities in the present. This war has shown that the
non-self-governing parts of the Commonwealth are not, as our enemies
supposed, a weakness to Great Britain in time of trouble, but a strength.
In other words, whatever may have happened in the past, Great Britain
has now won the consent of the ruled to the fact--not necessarily to the
methods--of British rule. To use what is doubtless unduly constitutional
language, we are now faced in India and elsewhere, not with a Revolutionary
Movement, but with an Opposition. That is a great incentive to further
development.
BOOKS
THE PHILOSOPHY OF VIOLENCE
BERNHARDI, _Germany and the Next War_ (2s.), has become familiar. But this
is only one _application_ of a doctrine which has found expression in many
spheres, as, for example, in the writings of the French Syndicalists, who
claim to be copying the _methods_ of Capitalism, and the _principles_ of
Bergson's philosophy--with what justification must be left to the reader
to determine. See G. SOREL, _Reflexions sur la Violence_ (Paris, Marcel
Rivière, 1910, 5 francs), and Sorel's other writings. "Bernhardi-ism" is,
in fact, not a German product: it has been before the public for some years
under the name of "militancy," in connection with various causes, though
it has never been put into execution on so tremendous a scale as by the
Prussian Government. Nor is its philosophical basis to be found only, if at
all, in Nietzsche.
KULTUR
The insistence on "Culture" as the main factor in the life and development
of peoples is to be found in practically every German history, and in a
great many non-German writers. It has received an additional vogue from
the development of the study of _Sociology_, which naturally seeks out, in
tracing the development of societies in the past, the elements which lend
themselves to measurement and description, and these are inevitably, from
the nature of the evidence, rather "cultural" than moral. It would be
invidious to mention instances.
EDUCATION
For Dr. SADLER'S articles see p. 119, above. See also PAULSEN, _German
Education: Past and Present._ 1908. 5s. net.
THE PRINCIPLE OF THE COMMONWEALTH
The best philosophical book on the relations of advanced and backward races
is _The Basis of Ascendancy: a Discussion of certain Principles of Public
Policy involved in the Development of the Southern States,_ by EDGAR
GARDNER MURPHY (a clergyman living at Montgomery, Alabama) (1909, 6s. net).
Though written with reference to the peculiar American problem, the book
has a far wider significance. There is no good book which covers the ground
either on India or the British Empire. E.R. BEVAN'S little volume on
_Indian Nationalism_ (2s. 6d. net) may be mentioned. An article on _India
and the Empire_ in the _Round Table_ for September 1912 is also worth
mention (and worth reprinting).
THE GREAT SOCIETY
WALLAS, _The Great Society_ (1914, 7s. 6d. net), and NORMAN ANGELL, _The
Great Illusion_ (1910, 2s. 6d. net), are the standard works--the former as
a psychologist and a philosopher, the latter as a pamphleteer with a very
acute vision within a limited field.
INTERNATIONAL LAW
See LINDSAY, _The War against War_ (Oxford pamphlets, 2d.), a model of
clear argument, so far as it goes. Also ALISON PHILLIPS, _The Confederation
of Europe: A Study of the European Alliance, 1813-1823, as an Experiment
in the International Organisation of Peace,_ (1914, 7s. 6d. net), the
best book on the Congress of Vienna and the problems connected with it,
especially on the subject of an International Tribunal and Universal Peace.
The Prime Minister's speeches will be familiar. See also Mr. Roosevelt's
pamphlet on the United States and the Hague Convention (Newnes, 2d.).
MONROE DOCTRINE
See an article by L.S. ROWE in the _Political Quarterly,_ October 1914.
INDEX
Accepting houses
Acton, Lord
Adalia
Adrianople
Adriatic, Serb access to
Aegean
Aehrenthal, Count
Agadir crisis
Agram
Agriculture, German
Albania
Albion, perfidious
Alexander I., Tsar
Alexander II.
Alexander III.
Alexander, King of Serbia
Alexandretta
Alsace-Lorraine
American Jews
Angell, Mr. Norman
Antivari
Arab movement
Armaments
Army, Austro-Hungarian
Arnold, Matthew
Asia Minor
Asquith, Mr.
Athenians
Auffenberg, General
Australia
Austria, genesis of
Austrian Note to Serbia
Austrian Question
Azev
Baden
Balance of Power
Balkan League
situation
wars
Ballads, Serb
Ballplatz
Banat of Temesvár
Bank of England
Baring, Maurice
Bebel, August
Belgium
Belgrade
Berchtold, Count
Berlin, Congress of
Bernhardi, General
Bessarabia
Bethmann-Hollveg
Bismarck
Bobrikoff, General
Bohemia
Bojana river
Bosnia
Bosnian annexation
Brandenburg
Britain, aims of
Britain and Germany
Brunswick
Brussa
Bucarest, Treaty of
Budapest
Bukovina
Bulgaria
Bülow, Prince
Bund, Jewish
Byzantium
Cabrinovic
Canadian trade
Carbonari
Carinthia
Carlyle
Carniola
Castlereagh
Catherine II.
Catholic Church
Cattaro
Cavour
Centre party
Cetinje
Charlemagne
Charles Albert
Charles V.
Charles the Bold
Charles, King of Roumania
Cilicia
Civil War, American
Coalition, Serbo-Croat
Cobden
Coleridge
Colonies, German
Comenius
Committee of Union and Progress
Commonwealth, a European
Concert of Europe
Conscription
Constantine, King
Constantinople
Constitution, German
Consular service
Cotton industry
Cramb, Professor
Credit
Crimean War
Croatia
Culture
Cuvaj
Cyprus
Czechs
Dalmatia
Danzig
Dardanelles
Debreczen
Delegations
Democracy
Denmark
Diplomatic Service
Disraeli
Dmowski, M.
Dobrudja
Dostoieffsky
Downing Street
Draga, Queen
Dual System
Duma
Dvorák
Economic policy
Education
Enver Pasha
Epirus
Eucken, Rudolf
Eugene, Prince
Europe, map of
Federalism in Austria
Fénelon
Ferdinand, King of Bulgaria
Fichte
_Finance, Haute_
Finland
Flemings
Flensburg
Florence
Foreign Office
Foreign Policy
Forgách, Count
Förstner, Lieutenant von
Francis Ferdinand, Archduke
assassination,
Francis Joseph
Frankfurt, Diet of
Frederick III.
Frederick the Great
_Fremdenblatt_, article
French Revolution
Constitution
Friedjung Trial
Galicia
Garibaldi
German Confederation
Germanisation
German Navy
Germans in Austria
Goethe
Gogol
Gold reserve
Gore, Bishop
Graham, Stephen
Greece
Grey, Sir Edward
Grosswardein
Habsburg, House of
Haeckel
Hague Congress
Conventions
Hanotaux, Gabriel
Hanover
Hanseatic League
Harnack
Harvey, T.E.
Hauptmann, Gerhart
Heine
Hermannstadt
Herzl, Theodor
Hohenzollern, House of
Holland
Holy Alliance
Synod
Humboldt, Wilhelm von
Hungarian Constitution
electoral system
Hungary, kingdom of
Hurban, Svetozar
Hus, John
Ibsen
Industry and war
Inter-State Law
Ionian Islands
Ipek
Ireland
Irredentism, Italian
Islam
Istria,
Italian culture in Dalmatia
Italy
Ivan the Terrible
Izvolsky
Jena, battle of
Jerusalem
Jews
Joseph II.
Jugoslavia
Junkers
Kara George
Karageorgevitch dynasty
Karlowitz
Kavala
Kennard, Dr.
Khalifate
Kiel Canal
Konieh
Königgrätz
Königsberg
Konrad von Hoetzendorf
Kosovo, battle of
Kossuth
Kosziusko
_Landmarks_
Lebanon
Legitimacy
Leipzig, battle of
Leopold I., Emperor
Leopold II
Leopold I. of Belgium
Lessing
Lloyd George, Mr.
Lodz
Louis XIV.
Luxemburg
Macara, Sir Charles
Macedonia
Magyarisation
Magyars
Maria Theresa
Marienburg
Marx, Karl
Masaryk, Professor
Maximilian I
Mazurian lakes
Mazzini
Metkovic
Metternich
Metz
Michael, Prince
Milan, King
Militarism
Military Frontiers
Mill, _On Liberty_
Milosh Obrenovitch
Mohács
Moltke
Monastir
Montenegro
Moscow
Murray, Gilbert
Napoleon
Napoleon III.
Napoleonic Wars
Nationalities, Hungarian Law of
Nationality, idea of
false conceptions of
Nazim Pasha
Nemanja dynasty
Neusatz (Novi Sad)
New Guinea
Nicholas II.
Nicholas, Grand Duke
Nietzsche
Nihilism
Norway
Novara
Obrenovitch dynasty
Orthodox Church
Palermo
Palestine
Pan-Germans
Panslavism
Peter the Great
Peter, King of Serbia
Petrograd
Piedmont
Pig War
Pius IX.
Plevna
Pobiedonostsev
Pola
Poland
Poles, Austrian
Prussian
Police state
Polish Partition
Ponsonby, Mr. A.
Posen
Prague
Princip, murderer
Protestantism in Germany
Prussia
Prussian education
Pushkin
Radicalism
Radkersburg
Ragusa
Ramsay MacDonald, Mr.
Reichstag, German
Relief Fund, National
Revolution, French
of 1848
Russian
Reynolds, Rothay
Rhodes
Rolland, Romain
Roosevelt, President
Roumania
Roumanians of Hungary
Rousseau
Russia and Prussia
Russian Church
Russification
Russo-Japanese War
Ruthenes
Sadler, Dr.
Salonica
Samoa
Sarajevo
Sarolea, Dr.
Savoy, House of
Saxons in Transylvania
Schleswig-Holstein
School strikes
Schurz, Carl
Scotland
Scott
Serbia
Serbo-Croat unity
Serb Patriarchate
Sicilies, Two
Silesia
Silistria
Slav and Teuton
Slavophilism
Slavs of Austria
Slovak Academy
Slovaks
Slovenes
Smyrna
Social effects of war
Socialism, State
Socialists, German
Sombart, Professor
Southern Slavs
State aid
Stephen Dushan
Stock Exchange
Stolypin
Sugar Commission
Sweden
Swinburne
Switzerland
Sybel
Syria
Szekels
Teutonic Knights
Tirol
Tisza, Count
Tomanovic, Dr.
Trade effects of war
Traders, South Sea
Trade Unions and war
Transylvania
Treitschke
Trentino
Trieste
Triple Alliance
Entente
Tripoli
Tschirschky
Turkification
Turks
Ukraine
Ulster
Unemployment
Ungvár
Uniate Church
Universal Suffrage
Valona
Vardar valley
Vatican
Venice
Victor Emanuel II.
Vienna
Congress of
Violence, Philosophy of
Virginia
Vistula
Voltaire
Wallas, Graham
Walloons
Warsaw, Grand-Duchy of
Weimar
Wells, H.G.
Westphalia
Wied, William of
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff
William I.
William II.
William I. of Holland
W.E.A.
World-Policy, German
Wordsworth
Würtemberg
Young Turks
Zabern
Zionism
Zollverein
Zvonomir
THE END