Part 9 (1/2)
”Yes, yes,” said Father Payne, rather impatiently. ”But you can't personify a nation like that; that personification of societies and cla.s.ses and sections of the human race does no end of harm. It is all a matter of statistics, not of generalisation. Take your three statements. 'It is good for a nation to have a war.' You mean, I suppose, that, in spite of the loss of the best stock and the disabling of strong young men, and the disintegration of families, and the hideous waste of time and money--subtracting all that--there is a balance of good to the survivors?”
”Yes, I think so,” said Lestrange.
”But are you sure about this?” said Father Payne. ”How do you know? Would you feel the same if you yourself were turned out a helpless invalid for life with your occupation gone? Are you sure that you are not only expressing the feeling of relief in the community at having a danger over?
Is it more than the sense of grat.i.tude of a man who has not suffered unbearably, to the people who _have_ died and suffered? The only evidence worth having is that of the real sufferers. Take the case of the people who have died. You can't get evidence from them. It is an a.s.sumption that they are content to have died. Is not the glory which surrounds them--and how short a time that lasts!--a human attempt to make consciences comfortable, and to relieve human doubts? The worst of that theory is that it makes so light of the worth of life; and, after all, a soldier's business is to kill and not to be killed; while, generally speaking, the worst turn that a strong, healthy, and honest man can do to his country is to die prematurely. Of course war has a great and instinctive prestige about it; are we not misled by that into accepting it as an inevitable business?”
”No, I believe there is a real gain,” said Lestrange, ”in the national sense of unity, in the feeling of having been equal to an emergency.”
”But are you speaking of a nation which conquers or a nation which is defeated?” said Father Payne.
”Both,” said Lestrange; ”it unites a nation in any case.”
”But if a nation is defeated,” said Father Payne, ”are they the better for the common depression of _not_ having been equal to the emergency?”
”It may make them set their teeth,” said Lestrange, ”and prepare themselves better.”
”Then it does not matter,” said Father Payne, ”whether they are united by the complacency of conquest or by the desire for revenge?”
”I would not quite say that,” said Lestrange. ”But at all events a desire for revenge might teach them discipline.”
”I can't believe that,” said Father Payne; ”it seems to me to make all the difference what the purpose has been. I do not believe that a nation gains by being united for a predatory and aggressive purpose. I think the victory of the Germans in the Franco-Prussian war has been wholly bad for them. It has made them believe in aggressiveness. A nation naturally philosophical and moral, and also both energetic and stupid, acquires the sense of a divine mission like that. I don't believe that a belief in your own methods of virtue is a wholesome belief. That seems to me likely to perpetuate war--and I suppose that we should all believe that war was an evil, if we could produce the good results of it without war.”
We all agreed to this.
”I will grant,” said Father Payne, ”that if a nation which sincerely believes in peace and wishes to cultivate goodwill, is wantonly and aggressively attacked, and repels that attack, it may gain much from war if it sticks to its theory, does not attempt reprisals, and leaves the conquered bully in a position to see its mistake and regain its self-respect. But it is a very dangerous kind of success for all that. I do not believe that complacency ever does anything but harm. The purpose must be a good one in the first place, the cause must be a great one, and it must be honestly pursued to the end, if it is to help a nation. But it lets all sorts of old and evil pa.s.sions loose, and it makes slaughter glorious.
No, I believe that at best it is a relapse into barbarism. Hardly any nation is strong enough and great enough to profit either by conquest or by defeat.”
”But what about the splendid self-sacrifice it all evokes?” said Lestrange.
”People give up their comfort, their careers, they go to face the last risk--is that nothing?”
”No,” said Father Payne; ”it is a very magnificent and splendid thing,--I don't deny that. But even so, that can't be preserved artificially. I mean that no one would think that, if there were no chance of a real war, it would be a good thing to evoke such self-sacrifice by having manoeuvres in which the best youth of the country were pitted against each other, to kill each other if possible. There must be a _real_ cause behind it. No one would say it was a n.o.ble thing for the youth of a country to fling themselves down over a cliff or to infect themselves with leprosy to show that they could despise suffering and death. If it were possible to settle the differences between nations without war, war would be a wholly evil thing. The only thing that one can say is that while there exists a strong nation which believes enough in war to make war aggressively, other nations are bound to resist it. But the nation which believes in war is _ipso facto_ an uncivilised nation.”
”But does not a war,” said Lestrange, ”clear the air, and take people away from petty aims and trivial squabbles into a sterner and larger atmosphere?”
”Yes, I think it does,” said Father Payne; ”but a great pestilence might do that. We might be thankful for all the good we could get out of a pestilence, and be grateful for it; but we should never dream of artificially renewing it for that reason. I look upon war as a sort of pestilence, a contagion which spreads under certain conditions. But we disguise the evil of it from ourselves, if we allow ourselves to believe in its being intrinsically glorious. I can't believe that highway robbery has only to be organised on a sufficiently large scale to make it glorious. A man who resists highway robbery, and runs the risk of death, because he wants to put a stop to it, seems to me a n.o.ble person--quite different from the man who sees a row going on and joins in it because he does not want to be out of a good thing! Do you remember the story of the Irishman who saw a fight proceeding, and rushed into the fray wielding his s.h.i.+llelagh, and praying that it might fall on the right heads? We have all of us uncivilised instincts, but it does not make them civilised to join with a million other people in indulging them. I think that a man who refuses to join from conviction, at the risk of being hooted as a coward, is probably doing a braver thing still.”
”But I have often, heard you say that life must be a battle,” said Lestrange.
”Yes,” said Father Payne, ”but I know what I want to fight. I want the human race to join in fighting crime and disease, evil conditions of nurture, dishonesty and sensuality. I don't want to pit the finest stock of each country against each other. That is simple suicide, for two nations to kill off the men who could fight evil best. I want the nations to combine collectively for a good purpose, not to combine separately for a bad one.”
”I see that,” said Lestrange; ”but I regard war as an inevitable element in society as at present const.i.tuted. I don't think the world can be persuaded out of it. If it ever ceases, it will die a natural death because it will suddenly be regarded as absurd. Meantime, I think it is our duty to regard the benefits of it; and, as I said, it turns a nation to G.o.d--it takes them out of petty squabbles, and makes them recognise a power beyond and behind the world.”
”Yes, that is so,” said Father Payne, ”if you regard war as caused by G.o.d.
But I rather believe that it is one of the things that G.o.d is fighting against! And I don't agree that it produces a n.o.ble temper all through. It does in many of the combatants; but there is nothing so characteristic at the outbreak of war as the amount of bullying that is done. Peaceful people are hooted at and shouted down; thousands of general convictions are over-ridden; the violent have it their own way; it seems to me to organise the unruly and obstreperous, and to force all gentler and more civilised natures into an unconvinced silence. Many of the people who do most for the happiness of the world can't face unpopularity. They are apt to think that there must be something wrong with themselves, something spiritless and abnormal, if they find themselves loathing the cruelties of which others seem to approve. I do not believe that war organises wholesome and sane opinion; I believe that it silences it. It is a time when base, heartless, cruel people can become heroes. It is true that it also gives serene, courageous, and calm people a great opportunity. But on the whole it is a bad time for sober, orderly, and peaceable people. I believe that it evokes a good many fine qualities--simplicity, uncomplaining patience, unselfishness, but it reveals them rather than creates them. It shows the worth of a nation, but it should want a great deal of evidence before I believe that it does more than prove to people that they are braver than they know. I can't believe vaguely in death and sorrow and disablement and waste being good things. It is merely a question of what you are paying so ghastly a price for. In the Napoleonic wars the price was paid for the liberties of Europe, to show a great nation that it must abandon the ideal of domination. That is a great cause; but it is great because men are evil, and not because they are good. War seems to me the temporary triumph of the old bad past over the finer and more beautiful future. Do not let us be taken in by the romance of it. That is the childish view, that loves the sight and sound of the marching column and the stirring music. People find it hard to believe that anything so strong and gallant and cheerful _can_ have a sinister side. And no doubt for a young, strong, and bold man the excitement of it is an intense pleasure. But what we have to ask is whether we are right in taking so heavy a toll from the world for all that: I do not think it right, though it may be inevitable. But then I belong to the future, and I think I should be more at home in the world a thousand years hence than I am to-day.”
”But I go back to my point,” said Lestrange: ”does not a great war like that send people to their knees in faith?”
”Depend upon it,” said Father Payne, ”that anything which makes people acquiesce in preventable evil, and see the beautiful effects of death and pain and waste, is the direct influence of the devil. It is the last and most guileful subtlety that he practises, to make us solemnly mournful and patient in the presence of calamities for which we have ourselves to thank.