Part 2 (1/2)
If you are compelled to prevent someone using force as against your nationality, it is because he believes that by the use of that force he can destroy or change it. If he thought that the use of force would be ineffective to that end he would not employ it.
I have attempted to show elsewhere that the abandonment of war for material ends depends upon a general realisation of its futility for accomplis.h.i.+ng those ends. In like manner does the abandonment of war for moral or ideal ends depend upon the general realisation of the growing futility of such means for those ends also--and for the growing futility of those ends if they could be accomplished.
We are sometimes told that it is the spirit of nationality--the desire to be of your place and locality--that makes war. That is not so. It is the desire of other men that you shall not be of your place and locality, of your habits and traditions, but of theirs. Not the desire of nationality, but the desire to destroy nationality is what makes the wars of nationality. If the Germans did not think that the retention of Polish or Alsatian nationality might hamper them in the art of war, hamper them in the imposition of force on some other groups, there would be no attempt to crush out this special possession of the Poles and Alsatians. It is the belief in force and a preference for settling things by force instead of by agreement that threatens or destroys nationality. And I have given an indication of the fact that it is not merely war, but the preparation for war, implying as it does great h.o.m.ogeneity in states and centralised bureaucratic control, which is to-day the great enemy of nationality. Before this tendency to centralisation which military necessity sets up much that gives colour and charm to European life is disappearing. And yet we are told that it is the Pacifists who are the enemy of nationality, and we are led to believe that in some way the war system in Europe stands for the preservation of nationality!
[Footnote 3: Review of Reviews, November, 1912.]
[Footnote 4: In the ”Daily Mail,” to whose Editor I am indebted for permission to reprint it.]
CHAPTER IV.
TURKISH IDEALS IN OUR POLITICAL THOUGHT.
This war and ”the Turks of Britain and Prussia”--The Anglo-Saxon and opposed ideals--Mr. C. Chesterton's case for ”killing and being killed”
as the best method of settling differences--Its application to Civil Conflicts--As in Spanish-America--The difference between Devons.h.i.+re and Venezuela--Will the Balkans adopt the Turco-Venezuelan political ideals or the British?
An English political writer remarked, on it becoming evident that the Christian States were driving back the Turks: ”This is a staggering blow to _all_ the Turks--those of England and Prussia as well as those of Turkey.”
But, of course, the British and Prussian Turks will never see it--like the Bourbons, they learn not. Here is a typically military system, the work of ”born fighters” which has gone down in welter before the a.s.saults of much less military States, the chief of which, indeed, has grown up in what Captain von Herbert has called, with some contempt, ”stagnant and enfeebling peace conditions,” formed by the people whom the Turks regarded as quite unfit to be made into warriors; whom they regarded much as some Europeans regard the Jews. It is the Christian populations of the Balkans who were the traders and workers--those brought most under economic influences; it was the Turks who escaped those influences. A few years since, I wrote: ”If the conqueror profits much by his conquest, as the Romans in one sense did, it is the conqueror who is threatened by the enervating effect of the soft and luxurious life; while it is the conquered who are forced to labour for the conqueror, and who learn in consequence those qualities of steady industry which are certainly a better moral training than living upon the fruits of others, upon labour extorted at the sword's point. It is the conqueror who becomes effete, and it is the conquered who learn discipline and the qualities making for a well-ordered State.”
Could we ask a better ill.u.s.tration than the history of the Turk and his Christian victims? I exemplified the matter thus: ”If during long periods a nation gives itself up to war, trade languishes, the population loses the habit of steady industry, government and administration become corrupt, abuses escape punishment, and the real sources of a people's strength and expansion dwindle. What has caused the relative failure and decline of Spanish, Portuguese, and French expansion in Asia and the New World, and the relative success of English expansion therein? Was it the mere hazards of war which gave to Great Britain the domination of India and half of the New World? That is surely a superficial reading of history. It was, rather, that the methods and processes of Spain, Portugal, and France were military, while those of the Anglo-Saxon world were commercial and peaceful. Is it not a commonplace that in India, quite as much as in the New World, the trader and the settler drove out the soldier and the conqueror? The difference between the two methods was that one was a process of conquest, and the other of colonizing, or non-military administration for commercial purposes. The one embodied the sordid Cobdenite idea, which so excites the scorn of the militarists, and the other the lofty military ideal. The one was parasitism; the other co-operation....
”How may we sum up the whole case, keeping in mind every empire that ever existed--the a.s.syrian, the Babylonian, the Mede and Persian, the Macedonian, the Roman, the Frank, the Saxon, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Bourbon, the Napoleonic? In all and every one of them we may see the same process, which is this: If it remains military it decays; if it prospers and takes its share of the work of the world it ceases to be military. There is no other reading of history.”
But despite these very plain lessons, there are many amongst us who regard physical conflict as the ideal form of human relations.h.i.+p; ”killing and being killed” as the best way to determine the settlement of differences, and a society which drifts from these ideals as on the high road to degeneration, and who deem those who set before themselves the ideal of abolis.h.i.+ng or attenuating poverty for the ma.s.s of men, ”low and sordid.”
Thus Mr. Cecil Chesterton[5]:
In essence Mr. Angell's query is: ”Should usurers go to war?”
I may say, in pa.s.sing, that I am not clear that even on the question thus raised Mr. Angell makes out his case. His case, broadly stated, is that the net of ”Finance”--or, to put it plainer, Cosmopolitan Usury--which is at present spread over Europe would be disastrously torn by any considerable war; and that in consequence it is to the interest of the usurers to preserve peace.
But here, it seems to me, we must make a clear differentiation. It may easily be to the interest of a particular usurer, or group of usurers, to provoke war; that very financial crisis which Mr.
Angell antic.i.p.ates may quite probably be a source of profit to them. That it would not be to the interest of a nation of usurers to fight is very probable. That such a nation would not fight, or, if it did, would be exceedingly badly beaten, is certain. But that only serves to raise the further question of whether it is to the ultimate advantage of a nation to repose upon usury; and whether the breaking of the net of usury which at present unquestionably holds Europe in captivity would not be for the advantage, as it would clearly be for the honour, of our race.... The sword is too sacred a thing to be prost.i.tuted to such dirty purposes. But whether he succeeds or fails in this attempt, it will make no difference to the ma.s.s of plain men who, when they fight and risk their lives, do not do so in the expectation of obtaining a certain interest on their capital, but for quite other reasons.
Mr. Angell's latest appeal comes, I think, at an unfortunate moment. It is not merely that the Balkan States have refused to be convinced by Mr. Angell as to their chances of commercial profit from the war. It is that if Mr. Angell had succeeded to the fullest extent in convincing them that there was not a quarter per cent. to be made out of the war, nay, that--horrible thought!--they would actually be poorer at the end of the war than at the beginning, they would have gone to war all the same.
Since Mr. Angell's argument clearly applies as much or more to civil as to international conflicts, I may perhaps be allowed to turn to civil conflicts to make clear my meaning. In this country during the last three centuries one solid thing has been done. The power of Parliament was pitted in battle against the power of the Crown, and won. As a result, for good or evil, Parliament really is stronger than the Crown to-day. The power of the ma.s.s of the people to control Parliament has been given as far as mere legislation could give it. We all know that it is a sham. And if you ask what it is that makes the difference of reality between the two cases, it is this: that men killed and were killed for the one thing and not for the other.
I have no s.p.a.ce to develop all that I should like to say about the indirect effects of war. All I will say is this, that men do judge, and always will judge, things by the ultimate test of how they fight. The German victory of forty years ago has produced not only an astonis.h.i.+ng expansion, industrial as well as political of Germany, but has (most disastrously, as I think) infected Europe with German ideas, especially with the idea that you make a nation strong by making its people behave like cattle. G.o.d send that I may live to see the day when victorious armies from Gaul shall shatter this illusion, burn up Prussianism with all its Police Regulations, Insurance Acts, Poll Taxes, and insults to the poor, and rea.s.sert the Republic. It will never be done in any other way.
If arbitration is ever to take the place of war, it must be backed by a corresponding array of physical force. Now the question immediately arises: Are we prepared to arm any International Tribunal with any such powers? Personally, I am not.... Turn back some fifty years to the great struggle for the emanc.i.p.ation of Italy. Suppose that a Hague Tribunal had then been in existence, armed with coercive powers. The dispute between Austria and Sardinia must have been referred to that tribunal. That tribunal must have been guided by existing treaties. The Treaty of Vienna was perhaps the most authoritative ever entered into by European Powers. By that treaty, Venice and Lombardy were unquestionably a.s.signed to Austria. A just tribunal administering international law _must_ have decided in favour of Austria, and have used the whole armed force of Europe to coerce Italy into submission. Are those Pacifists, who try at the same time to be Democrats, prepared to acquiesce in such a conclusion? Personally, I am not.
I replied as follows:
Mr. Cecil Chesterton says that the question which I have raised is this: ”Should usurers go to war?”