Part 2 (2/2)

That, of course, is not true. I have never, even by implication, put such a problem, and there is nothing in the article which he criticises, nor in any other statement of my own, that justifies it. What I have asked is whether peoples should go to war.

I should have thought it was pretty obvious that, whatever happens, usurers do not go to war: the peoples go to war, and the peoples pay, and the whole question is whether they should go on making war and paying for it. Mr. Chesterton says that if they are wise they will; I say that if they are wise they will not.

I have attempted to show that the prosperity of peoples--by which, of course, one means the diminution of poverty, better houses, soap and water, healthy children, lives prolonged, conditions sufficiently good to ensure leisure and family affection, fuller and completer lives generally--is not secured by fighting one another, but by co-operation and labour, by a better organisation of society, by improved human relations.h.i.+p, which, of course, can only come of better understanding of the conditions of that relations.h.i.+p, which better understanding means discussion, adjustment, a desire and capacity to see the point of view of the other man--of all of which war and its philosophy is the negation.

To all of this Mr. Chesterton replies: ”That only concerns the Jews and the moneylenders.” Again, this is not true. It concerns all of us, like all problems of our struggle with Nature. It is in part at least an economic problem, and that part of it is best stated in the more exact and precise terms that I have employed to deal with it--the term's of the market-place. But to imply that the conditions that there obtain are the affair merely of bankers and financiers, to imply that these things do not touch the lives of the ma.s.s, is simply to talk a nonsense the meaninglessness of which only escapes some of us because in these matters we happen to be very ignorant. It is not mainly usurers who suffer from bad finance and bad economics (one may suggest that they are not quite so simple); it is mainly the people as a whole.

Mr. Chesterton says that we should break this ”net of usury” in which the peoples are enmeshed. I agree heartily; but that net has been woven mainly by war (and that diversion of energy and attention from social management which war involves), and is, so far as the debts of the European States are concerned (so large an element of usury), almost solely the outcome of war. And if the peoples go on piling up debt, as they must if they are to go on piling up armaments (as Mr. Chesterton wants them to), giving the best of their attention and emotion to sheer physical conflict, instead of to organisation and understanding, they will merely weave that web of debt and usury still closer; it will load us more heavily and strangle us to a still greater extent. If usury is the enemy, the remedy is to fight usury. Mr. Chesterton says the remedy is for its victims to fight one another.

And you will not fight usury by hanging Rothschilds, for usury is worst where that sort of thing is resorted to. Widespread debt is the outcome of bad management and incompetence, economic or social, and only better management will remedy it. Mr. Chesterton is sure that better management is only arrived at by ”killing and being killed.” He really does urge this method even in civil matters. (He tells us that the power of Parliament over the Crown is real, and that of the people over Parliament a sham, ”because men killed and were killed for the one, and not for the other.”) It is the method of Spanish America where it is applied more frankly and logically, and where still, in many places, elections are a military affair, the questions at issue being settled by killing and being killed, instead of by the cowardly, pacifist methods current in Europe. The result gives us the really military civilisations of Venezuela, Colombia, Nicaragua, and Paraguay. And, although the English system may have many defects--I think it has--those defects exist in a still greater degree where force ”settles” the matters in dispute, where the bullet replaces the ballot, and where bayonets are resorted to instead of brains. For Devons.h.i.+re is better than Nicaragua. Really it is. And it would get us out of none of our troubles for one group to impose its views simply by preponderant physical force, for Mr. Asquith, for instance, in the true Castro or Zuyala manner, to announce that henceforth all critics of the Insurance Act are to be shot, and that the present Cabinet will hold office as long as it can depend upon the support of the Army.

For, even if the country rose in rebellion, and fought it out and won, the successful party would (if they also believed in force) do exactly the same thing to _their_ opponents; and so it would go on never-endingly (as it has gone on during weary centuries throughout the larger part of South America), until the two parties came once more to their senses, and agreed not to use force when they happened to be able to do so; which is our present condition. But it is the condition of England merely because the English, as a whole, have ceased to believe in Mr. Chesterton's principles; it is not yet the condition of Venezuela because the Venezuelans have not yet ceased to believe those principles, though even they are beginning to.

Mr. Chesterton says: ”Men do judge, and always will judge, by the ultimate test of how they fight.” The pirate who gives his blood has a better right, therefore, to the s.h.i.+p than the merchant (who may be a usurer!) who only gives his money. Well, that is the view which was all but universal well into the period of what, for want of a better word, we call civilisation. Not only was it the basis of all such inst.i.tutions as the ordeal and duel; not only did it justify (and in the opinion of some still justifies) the wars of religion and the use of force in religious matters generally; not only was it the accepted national polity of such communities as the Vikings, the Barbary States, and the Red Indians; but it is still, unfortunately, the polity of certain European states. But the idea is a survival and--and this is the important point--an admission of failure to understand where right lies: to ”fight it out” is the remedy of the boy who for the life of him cannot see who is right and who is wrong.

At ten years of age we are all quite sure that piracy is a finer calling than trade, and the pirate a finer fellow than the Shylock who owns the s.h.i.+p--which, indeed, he may well be. But as we grow up (which some of the best of us never do) we realise that piracy is not the best way to establish the owners.h.i.+p of cargoes, any more than the ordeal is the way to settle cases at law, or the rack of proving a dogma, or the Spanish American method the way to settle differences between Liberals and Conservatives.

And just as civil adjustments are made most efficiently, as they are in England (say), as distinct from South America, by a general agreement not to resort to force, so it is the English method in the international field which gives better results than that based on force. The relations.h.i.+p of Great Britain to Canada or Australia is preferable to the relations.h.i.+p of Russia to Finland or Poland, or Germany to Alsace-Lorraine. The five nations of the British Empire have, by agreement, abandoned the use of force as between themselves. Australia may do us an injury--exclude our subjects, English or Indian, and expose them to insult--but we know very well that force will not be used against her. To withhold such force is the basis of the relations.h.i.+p of these five nations; and, given a corresponding development of ideas, might equally well be the basis of the relations.h.i.+p of fifteen--about all the nations of the world who could possibly fight. The difficulties Mr. Chesterton imagines--an international tribunal deciding in favour of Austria concerning the recession of Venice and Lombardy, and summoning the forces of United Europe to coerce Italy into submission--are, of course, based on the a.s.sumption that a United Europe, having arrived at such understanding as to be able to sink its differences, would be the same kind of Europe that it is now, or was a generation ago. If European statecraft advances sufficiently to surrender the use of force against neighbouring states, it will have advanced sufficiently to surrender the use of force against unwilling provinces, as in some measure British statesmans.h.i.+p has already done. To raise the difficulty that Mr. Chesterton does is much the same as a.s.suming that a court of law in San Domingo or Turkey will give the same results as a court of law in Great Britain, because the form of the mechanism is the same. And does Mr. Chesterton suggest that the war system settles these matters to perfection? That it has worked satisfactorily in Ireland and Finland, or, for the matter of that, in Albania or Macedonia?

For if Mr. Chesterton urges that killing and being killed is the way to determine the best means of governing a country, it is his business to defend the Turk, who has adopted that principle during four hundred years, not the Christians, who want to bring that method to an end and adopt another. And I would ask no better example of the utter failure of the principles that I combat and Mr. Chesterton defends than their failure in the Balkan Peninsula.

This war is due to the vile character of Turkish rule, and the Turk's rule is vile because it is based on the sword. Like Mr.

Chesterton (and our pirate), the Turk believes in the right of conquest, ”the ultimate test of how they fight.” ”The history of the Turks,” says Sir Charles Elliott, ”is almost exclusively a catalogue of battles.” He has lived (for the most gloriously uneconomic person has to live, to follow a trade of some sort, even if it be that of theft) on tribute exacted from the Christian populations, and extorted, not in return for any work of administration, but simply because he was the stronger. And that has made his rule intolerable, and is the cause of this war.

Now, my whole thesis is that understanding, work, co-operation, adjustment, must be the basis of human society; that conquest as a means of achieving national advantage must fail; that to base your prosperity or means of livelihood, your economic system, in short, upon having more force than someone else, and exercising it against him, is an impossible form of human relations.h.i.+p that is bound to break down. And Mr. Chesterton says that the war in the Balkans demolishes this thesis. I do not agree with him.

The present war in the Balkans is an attempt--and happily a successful one--to bring this reign of force and conquest to an end, and that is why those of us who do not believe in military force rejoice.

The debater, more concerned with verbal consistency than realities and the establishment of sound principles, will say that this means the approval of war. It does not; it merely means the choice of the less evil of two forms of war. War has been going on in the Balkans, not for a month, but has been waged by the Turks daily against these populations for 400 years.

The Balkan peoples have now brought to an end a system of rule based simply upon the accident of force--”killing and being killed.” And whether good or ill comes of this war will depend upon whether they set up a similar system or one more in consonance with pacifist principles. I believe they will choose the latter course; that is to say, they will continue to co-operate between themselves instead of fighting between themselves; they will settle differences by discussion, adjustment, not force. But if they are guided by Mr. Chesterton's principle, if each one of the Balkan nations is determined to impose its own especial point of view, to refuse all settlement by co-operation and understanding, where it can resort to force--why, in that case, the strongest (presumably Bulgaria) will start conquering the rest, start imposing government by force, and will listen to no discussion or argument; will simply, in short, take the place of the Turk in the matter, and the old weary contest will begin afresh, and we shall have the Turkish system under a new name, until that in its turn is destroyed, and the whole process begun again _da capo_. And if Mr. Chesterton says that this is not his philosophy, and that he would recommend the Balkan nations to come to an understanding, and co-operate together, instead of fighting one another, why does he give different counsels to the nations of Christendom as a whole? If it is well for the Balkan peoples to abandon conflict as between themselves in favour of co-operation against the common enemy, why is it ill for the other Christian peoples to abandon such conflict in favour of co-operation against their common enemy, which is wild nature and human error, ignorance and pa.s.sion.

[Footnote 5: From ”Everyman” to whose Editor I am indebted for permission to print my reply.]

CHAPTER V.

OUR RESPONSIBILITY FOR BALKAN WARS.

Mr. Winston Churchill on the ”Responsibility” of Diplomacy--What does he mean?--An easy (and popular) philosophy--Can we neglect past if we would avoid future errors?--British temper and policy in the Crimean War--What are its lessons?--Why we fought a war to sustain the ”integrity and independence of the Turkish dominion in Europe”--Supporting the Turk against his Christian victims--From fear of Russian growth which we are now aiding--The commentary of events--Shall we back the wrong horse again?

Here was a war which had broken out in spite of all that rulers and diplomatists could do to prevent it, a war in which the Press had had no part, a war which the whole force of the money power had been subtly and steadfastly directed to prevent, which had come upon us not through the ignorance or credulity of the people; but, on the contrary, through their knowledge of their history and their destiny.... Who is the man who is vain enough to suppose that the long antagonisms of history and of time can in all circ.u.mstances be adjusted by the smooth and superficial conventions of politicians and amba.s.sadors?

Thus Mr. Churchill. It is a plea for the inevitability, not merely of war, but of a people's ”destiny.”

What precisely does it mean? Does it mean that the European Powers have in the past been entirely wise and honest, have never intrigued with the Turk the one against the other, have always kept good faith, have never been inspired by false political theories and tawdry and shoddy ideals, have, in short, no responsibility for the abominations that have gone on in the Balkan peninsula for a century? No one outside a lunatic asylum would urge it. But, then, that means that diplomacy has _not_ done all it might to prevent this war. Why does Mr. Churchill say it has?

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