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 ship 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 institutions 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 ship—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 ownership 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 relationship of Great Britain to Canada or Australia is preferable to the relationship 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 relationship of these five nations; and, given a corresponding development of ideas, might equally well be the basis of the relationship 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 assumption 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 statesmanship has already done. To raise the difficulty that Mr. Chesterton does is much the same as assuming 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 relationship 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 passion.
[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 circumstances be adjusted by the smooth and superficial conventions of politicians and ambassadors?
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?
And does the passage I have quoted mean that we—that English diplomacy—has had no part in European diplomacy in the past? Have we not, on the contrary, by universal admission played a predominant role by backing the wrong horse?
But, then, that is not a popular thing to point out, and Mr. Churchill is very careful not to point it out in any way that could give justification to an unpopular view or discredit a popular one. He is, however, far too able a Cabinet Minister to ignore obvious facts, and it is interesting to note how he disposes of them. Observe the following passage:
For the drama or tragedy which is moving to its climax in the Balkans we all have our responsibilities, and none of us can escape our share of them by blaming others or by blaming the Turk. If there is any man here who, looking back over the last 35 years, thinks he knows where to fix the sole responsibility for all the procrastination and provocation, for all the jealousies and rivalries, for all the religious and racial animosities, which have worked together for this result, I do not envy him his complacency…. Whether we blame the belligerents or criticise the Powers or sit in sackcloth and ashes ourselves is absolutely of no consequence at the present moment.
Now if for this tragedy we "all have our responsibility," then what becomes of his first statement that the war is raging despite all that rulers and diplomats could do to prevent it? If the war was "inevitable," and rulers and diplomats have done all they could to prevent it, neither they nor we have any responsibility for it. He knows, of course, that it is impossible to deny that responsibility, that our errors in the past have been due not to any lack of readiness to fight or quarrel with foreign nations, but precisely to the tendency to do those things and our _in_disposition to set aside instinctive and reasonless jealousies and rivalries in favour of a deeper sense of responsibility and a somewhat longer vision.
But, again, this quite obvious moral, that if we have our responsibility, if, in other words, we have not done all that we might and have been led away by temper and passion, we should, in order to avoid a repetition of such errors in the future, try and see where we have erred in the past, is precisely the moral that Mr. Churchill does not draw. Again, it is not the popular line to show with any definiteness that we have been wrong. An abstract proposition that "we all have our responsibilities," is, while a formal admission of the obvious fact also at the same time, an excuse, almost a justification. You realise Mr. Churchill's method: Having made the necessary admission of fact, you immediately prevent any unpleasant (or unpopular) practical conclusion concerning our duty in the matter by talking of the "complacency" of those who would fix any real and definite part of the responsibility upon you. (Because, of course, no man, knows where lies, and no one would ever attempt to fix, the "sole" responsibility). Incidentally, one might point out to Mr. Churchill that the attempt to see the errors of past conduct and to avoid them in the future is not complacency, but that airily to dismiss our responsibility by saying that it is of "no consequence whether we sit in sackcloth and ashes" is complacency.
Mr. Churchill's idea seems to be that men should forget their errors—and commit them again. For that is what it amounts to. We cannot, indeed, undo the past, that is true; but we can prevent it being repeated. But we certainly shall not prevent such repetition if we hug the easy doctrine that we have always been right—that it is not worth while to see how our principles have worked out in practice, to take stock of our experience, and to see what results the principles we propose again to put into operation, have given.
The practical thing for us if we would avoid like errors in the future is to see where our responsibility lies—a thing which we shall never do if we are governed by the net impression which disengages itself from speeches like those of Mr. Churchill. For the net result of that speech, the impression, despite a few shrewd qualifications which do not in reality affect that net result but which may be useful later wherewith to silence critics, is that war is inevitable, a matter of "destiny," that diplomacy—the policy pursued by the respective powers—can do nothing to prevent it; that as brute force is the one and final appeal the only practical policy is to have plenty of armaments and to show a great readiness to fight; that it is futile to worry about past errors; (especially as an examination of them would go a long way to discredit the policy just indicated); that the troublesome and unpopular people who in the past happen to have kept their heads during a prevailing dementia—and whose policy happens to have been as right as that of the popular side was wrong—can be dismissed with left-handed references to "complacency," This sort of thing is popular enough, of course, but—
Well, I will take the risks of a tactic which is the exact contrary to that adopted by Mr. Churchill and would urge upon those whose patriotism is not of the order which is ready to see their country in the wrong and who do feel some responsibility for its national policy, to ask themselves these questions:
Is it true that the Powers could have prevented in large measure the abominations which Turkey has practised in the Balkans for the last half-century or so?
Has our own policy been a large factor in determining that of the
Powers?
Has our own policy directly prevented in the past the triumph of the Christian populations which, despite that policy, has finally taken place?
Was our own policy at fault when we were led into a war to ensure the "integrity and independence of the Turkish dominions in Europe"?
Is the general conception of Statecraft on which that policy has been based—the "Balance of Power" which presupposes the necessary rivalry of nations and which in the past has led to oppose Russia as it is now leading to oppose Germany—sound, and has it been justified in history?
Did we give due weight to the considerations urged by the public men of the past who opposed such features of this policy as the Crimean War; was the immense popularity of that war any test of its wisdom; were the rancour, hatred and scorn poured upon those men just or deserved?
* * * * *
Now the first four of these questions have been answered by history and are answered by every one to-day in an emphatic affirmative. This is not the opinion of a Pacifist partisan. Even the Times is constrained to admit that "these futile conflicts might have ended years ago, if it had not been for the quarrels of the Western nations."[6] And as to the Crimean War, has not the greatest Conservative foreign minister of the nineteenth century admitted that "we backed the wrong horse"—and, what is far more to the point, have not events unmistakably demonstrated it?
Do we quite realise that if foreign policy had that continuity which the political pundits pretend, we should now be fighting on the side of the Turk against the Balkan States? That we have entered into solemn treaty obligations, as part of our national policy, to guarantee for ever the "integrity and independence of the Turkish dominions in Europe," that we fought a great and popular war to prevent that triumph of the Christian population which will arise as the result of the present war? That but for this policy which caused us to maintain the Turk in Europe the present war would certainly not be raging, and, what is much more to the point, that but for our policy the abominations which have provoked it and which it is its object to terminate, would so far as human reason can judge at all have been brought to an end generations since? Do we quite realise that we are in large part responsible, not merely for the war, but for the long agony of horror which have provoked it and made it necessary; that when we talk of the jealousies and rivalries of the Powers as playing so large a part in the responsibility for these things, we represent, perhaps, the chief among those jealousies and rivalries? That it is not mainly the Turk nor the Russian nor the Austrian which has determined the course of history in the Balkan peninsular since the middle of the 19th century, but we Englishmen—the country gentleman obsessed by vague theories of the Balance of Power and heaven knows what, reading his Times and barking out his preposterous politics over the dinner table? That this fatal policy was dictated simply by fear of the growth of "Russian barbarism and autocracy" and "the overshadowing of the Western nations by a country whose institutions are inimical to our own"? That while we were thus led into war by a phantom danger to our Indian possessions, we were quite blind to the real danger which threatened them, which a year or two later, in the Mutiny, nearly lost us them and which were not due to the machinations of a rival power but to our own misgovernment; that this very "barbaric growth" and expansion towards India which we fought a war to check we are now actively promoting in Persia and elsewhere by our (effective) alliance? That while as recently as fifteen years ago we would have gone to war to prevent any move of Russia towards the Indian frontier, we are to-day actually encouraging her to build a railway there? And that it is now another nation which stands as the natural barrier to Russian expansion to the West—Germany—whose power we are challenging, and that all tendencies point to our backing again the wrong horse, to our fighting with the "semi-Asiatic barbarian" (as our fathers used to call him) against the nation which has close racial and cultural affinity to our own, just as half a century since the same fatal obsession about the "Balance of Power" led us to fight with the Mohammedan in order to bolster up for half a century his anti-Christian rule.
The misreading of history in this matter is, unfortunately, not possible. The point upon which in the Crimean war the negotiations with Russia finally broke was the claim, based upon her reading of the Vienna note, to stand as religious protector of the Greek Christians in the Balkan peninsular. That was the pivot of the whole negotiations, and the war was the outcome of our support of the Turkish view—or, rather, our conduct of Turkish policy, for throughout the whole period England was conducting the Turkish negotiations; indeed, as Bright said at the time, she was carrying on the Turkish Government and ruling the Turkish Empire through her ministers in Constantinople.
I will quote a speech of the period made in the House of Commons. It was as follows:
Our opponents seem actuated by a frantic and bitter hostility to Russia, and, without considering the calamities in which they might involve this country, they have sought to urge it into a great war, as they imagined, on behalf of European freedom, and in order to cripple the resources of Russia….
The question is, whether the advantages both to Turkey and England of avoiding war altogether, would have been less than those which are likely to arise from the policy which the Government has pursued? Now, if the noble Lord the Member for Tiverton is right in saying that Turkey is a growing power, and that she has elements of strength which unlearned persons like myself know nothing about; surely no immediate, or sensible, or permanent mischief could have arisen to her from the acceptance of the Vienna note, which all the distinguished persons who agreed to it have declared to be perfectly consistent with her honour and independence. If she had been growing stronger and stronger of late years, surely she would have grown still stronger in the future, and there might have been a reasonable expectation that, whatever disadvantages she might have suffered for a time from that note, her growing strength would have enabled her to overcome them, while the peace of Europe might have been preserved. But suppose that Turkey is not a growing power, but that the Ottoman rule in Europe is tottering to its fall, I come to the conclusion that, whatever advantages were afforded to the Christian population of Turkey would have enabled them to grow more rapidly in numbers, in industry, in wealth, in intelligence, and in political power; and that, as they thus increased in influence, they would have become more able, in case any accident, which might not be far distant, occurred, to supplant the Mahommedan rule, and to establish themselves in Constantinople as a Christian State, which, I think, every man who hears me will admit is infinitely more to be desired than that the Mahommedan power should be permanently sustained by the bayonets of France and the fleets of England. Europe would thus have been at peace; for I do not think even the most bitter enemies of Russia believe that the Emperor of Russia intended last year, if the Vienna note or Prince Menchikoff's last and most moderate proposition had been accepted, to have marched on Constantinople. Indeed, he had pledged himself in the most distinct manner to withdraw his troops at once from the Principalities, if the Vienna note were accepted; and therefore in that case Turkey would have been delivered from the presence of the foe; peace would for a time have been secured for Europe; and the whole matter would have drifted on to its natural solution—which is, that the Mahommedan power in Europe should eventually succumb to the growing power of the Christian population of the Turkish territories.
Now, looking back upon what has since happened, which view shows the greater wisdom and prevision? That of the man who delivered this speech (and he was John Bright) or those against whom he spoke? To which set of principles has time given the greater justification?
Yet upon the men who resisted what we all admit, in this case at least, to have been the false theories and who supported, what we equally admit now, to have been the right principles, we poured the same sort of ferocious contempt that we are apt now spasmodically to pour upon those who, sixty years later, would prevent our drifting in the same blind fashion into a war just as futile and bound to be infinitely more disastrous—a war embodying the same "principles" supported by just the same theories and just the same arguments which led us into this other one.
I know full well the prejudice which the names I am about to cite is apt to cause. We poured out upon the men who bore them a rancour, contempt and hatred which few men in English public life have had to face. Morley, in his life of Cobden, says of these two men—Cobden and Bright:
They had, as Lord Palmerston said, the whole world against them. It was not merely the august personages of the Court, nor the illustrious veterans in Government and diplomacy, nor the most experienced politicians in Parliament, nor the powerful journalists, nor the men versed in great affairs of business. It was no light thing to confront even that solid mass of hostile judgment. But besides all this, Cobden and Mr. Bright knew that the country at large, even their trusty middle and industrial classes, had turned their faces resolutely and angrily away from them. Their own great instrument, the public meeting, was no longer theirs to wield. The army of the Nonconformists, which has so seldom been found fighting on the wrong side, was seriously divided.
Public opinion was bitterly and impatiently hostile and intractable. Mr. Bright was burnt in effigy. Cobden, at a meeting in his own constituency, after an energetic vindication of his opinions, saw resolutions carried against him. Every morning they were reviled in half the newspapers in the country as enemies of the commonwealth. They were openly told that they were traitors, and that it was a pity they could not be punished as traitors.
In the House, Lord Palmerston once began his reply by referring to Mr. Bright as "the Honourable and Reverend gentleman," Cobden rose to call him to order for this flippant and unbecoming phrase. Lord Palmerston said he would not quarrel about words. Then went on to say that he thought it right to tell Mr. Bright that his opinion was a matter of entire difference, and that he treated his censure with the most perfect indifference and contempt. On another occasion he showed the same unmannerliness to Cobden himself. Cobden had said that under certain circumstances he would fight, or if he could not fight, he would work for the wounded in the hospitals. "Well," said Lord Palmerston in reply, with the sarcasm of a schoolboy's debating society, "there are many people in this country who think that the party to which he belongs should go immediately into a hospital of a different kind, and which I shall not mention." This refined irony was a very gentle specimen of the insult and contumely which was poured upon Cobden and Mr. Bright at this time….
It is impossible not to regard the attitude of the two objects of this vast unpopularity as one of the most truly honourable spectacles in our political history. The moral fortitude, like the political wisdom of these two strong men, begins to stand out with a splendour that already recalls the great historic heights of statesmanship and patriotism. Even now our heart-felt admiration and gratitude goes out to them as it goes out to Burke for his lofty and manful protests against the war with America and the oppression of Ireland, and to Charles Fox for his bold and strenuous resistance to the war with the French Republic.
Before indulging in the dementia which those names usually produce, will the reader please note that it is not my business now to defend either the general principles of Cobden and Bright or the political spirit which they are supposed to represent. Let them be as sordid, mean, unworthy, pusillanimous as you like—and as the best of us then said they were ("a mean, vain, mischievous clique" even so good a man as Tom Hughes could call them). We called them cowards—because practically alone they faced a country which had become a howling mob; we called their opponents "courageous" because with the whole country behind them they habitually poured contempt upon the under dog.
And we thus hated these men because they did their best to dissuade us from undertaking a certain war. Very good; we have had our war; we carried our point, we prevented the break-up of the Turkish Empire; those men were completely beaten. And they are dead. Cannot we afford to set aside those old passions and see how far in one particular at least they may have been right?
We admit, of course, if we are honest—happily everyone admits—that these despised men were right and those who abused them were wrong. The verdict of fact is there. Says Lord Morley:—
When we look back upon the affairs of that time, we see that there were two policies open. Lord Palmerston's was one, Cobden and Bright's the other. If we are to compare Lord Palmerston's statesmanship and insight in the Eastern Question with that of his two great adversaries, it is hard, in the light of all that has happened since, to resist the conclusion that Cobden and Mr. Bright were right, and Lord Palmerston was disastrously wrong. It is easy to plead extenuating circumstances for the egregious mistakes in Lord Palmerston's policy about the Eastern Question, the Suez Canal, and some other important subjects; but the plea can only be allowed after it has been frankly recognized that they really were mistakes, and that these abused men exposed and avoided them. Lord Palmerston, for instance, asked why the Czar could not be "satisfied, as we all are, with the progressively liberal system of Turkey." Cobden, in his pamphlet twenty years before, insisted that this progressively liberal system of Turkey had no existence. Which of these two propositions was true may be left to the decision of those who lent to the Turk many millions of money on the strength of Lord Palmerston's ignorant and delusive assurances. It was mainly owing to Lord Palmerston, again, that the efforts of the war were concentrated at Sebastopol. Sixty thousand English and French troops, he said, with the co-operation of the fleets, would take Sebastopol in six weeks. Cobden gave reasons for thinking very differently, and urged that the destruction of Sebastopol, even when it was achieved, would neither inflict a crushing blow to Russia, nor prevent future attacks upon Turkey. Lord Palmerston's error may have been intelligible and venial; nevertheless, as a fact, he was in error and Cobden was not, and the error cost the nation one of the most unfortunate, mortifying, and absolutely useless campaigns in English history. Cobden held that if we were to defend Turkey against Russia, the true policy was to use our navy, and not to send a land force to the Crimea. Would any serious politician now be found to deny it? We might prolong the list of propositions, general and particular, which Lord Palmerston maintained and Cobden traversed, from the beginning to the end of the Russian War. There is not one of these propositions in which later events have not shown that Cobden's knowledge was greater, his judgment cooler, his insight more penetrating and comprehensive. The bankruptcy of the Turkish Government, the further dismemberment of its Empire by the Treaty of Berlin, the abrogation of the Black Sea Treaty, have already done something to convince people that the two leaders saw much further ahead in 1854 and 1855 than men who had passed all their lives in foreign chanceries and the purlieus of Downing Street.
It is startling to look back upon the bullying contempt which the man who was blind permitted himself to show to the men who could see. The truth is, that to Lord Palmerston it was still incomprehensible and intolerable that a couple of manufacturers from Lancashire should presume to teach him foreign policy. Still more offensive to him was their introduction of morality into the mysteries of the Foreign Office.[7]
What have peace theories to do with this war? asks the practical man, who is the greatest mystic of all, contemptuously. Well, they have everything to do with it. For if we had understood some peace theories a little better a generation or two ago, if we had not allowed passion and error and prejudice instead of reason to dominate our policy, the sum of misery which these Balkan populations have known would have been immeasurably less. It is quite true that we could not have prevented this war by sending peace pamphlets to the Turk, or to the Balkanese, for that matter, but we could have prevented it if we ourselves had read them a generation or two since, just as our only means of preventing future wars is by showing a little less prejudice and a little less blindness.
And the practical question, despite Mr. Churchill, is whether we shall allow a like passion and a like prejudice again to blind us; whether we shall again back the wrong horse in the name of the same hollow theories drifting to a similar but greater futility and catastrophe, or whether we shall profit by our past to assure a better future.
[Footnote 6: 14/11/12]
[Footnote 7: The Life of Richard Cobden.—UNWIN.]
CHAPTER VI.
PACIFISM, DEFENCE, AND "THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF WAR."
Did the Crimean War prove Bright and Cobden wrong?—Our curious reasoning—Mr. Churchill on "illusions"—The danger of war is not the illusion but its benefits—We are all Pacifists now since we all desire Peace—Will more armaments alone secure it?—The experience of mankind—War "the failure of human wisdom"—Therefore more wisdom is the remedy—But the Militarists only want more arms—The German Lord Roberts—The military campaign against political Rationalism—How to make war certain.
The question surely, which for practical men stands out from the mighty historical episode touched on in the last chapter, is this: Was the fact that these despised men were so entirely right and their triumphant adversaries so entirely wrong a mere fluke, or was it due to the soundness of one set of principles and the hollowness of the other; and were the principles special to that case, or general to international conflict as a whole?
To have an opinion of worth on that question we must get away from certain confusions and misrepresentations.
It is a very common habit for the Bellicist to quote the list of wars which have taken place since the Crimean War as proof of the error of Bright and Cobden. But what are the facts?
Here were two men who strenuously and ruthlessly opposed a certain policy; they urged, not only that it would inevitably lead to war, but that the war would be futile—but not sterile, for they saw that others would grow from it. Their counsel was disregarded and the war came, and events have proved that they were right and the war-makers wrong, and the very fact that the wars took place is cited as disapproving their "theories."[8]
It is a like confusion of thought which prompts Mr. Churchill to refer to Pacifists as people who deem the danger of war an illusion.
This persistent misconception is worth a little examination.
* * * * *
The smoke from the first railway engines in England killed the cattle and the poultry of the country gentlemen near whose property the railroad passed—at least, that is what the country gentleman wrote to the Times.
Now if in the domain of quite simple material things the dislike of having fixed habits of thought disturbed, leads gentlemen to resent innovations in that way, it is not astonishing that innovations of a more intangible and elusive kind should be subject to a like unconscious misrepresentation, especially by newspapers and public men pushed by commercial or political necessity to say the popular thing rather than the true thing: that contained in the speech of Mr. Churchill, which, together with a newspaper comment thereon, I have made the "text" of this little book, is a typical case in point.
It is possible, of course, that Mr. Churchill in talking about "persons who profess to know that the danger of war has become an illusion," had not the slightest intention of referring to those who share the views embodied in "The Great Illusion," which are, not that the danger of war is an illusion, but that the benefit is. All that happened was that his hearers and readers interpreted his words as referring thereto; and that, of course, he could not possibly prevent.
In any case, to misrepresent an author (and I mean always, of course, quite sincere and unconscious misrepresentations, like that which led the country gentlemen to write that railway smoke killed poultry) is a trifling matter, but to misrepresent an idea, is not, for it makes that better understanding of facts, the creation of a more informed public opinion, by which alone we can avoid a possibly colossal folly, an understanding difficult enough as it is, still more difficult.
And that is why the current misrepresentation (again unconscious) of most efforts at the better understanding of the facts of international relationship needs very badly to be corrected. I will therefore be very definite.
The implication that Pacifists of any kind have ever urged that war is impossible is due either to that confusion of thought just touched upon, or is merely a silly gibe of those who deride arguments to which they have not listened, and consequently do not understand, or which they desire to misrepresent; and such misrepresentation is, when not unconscious, always stupid and unfair.
So far as I am concerned, I have never written a line, nor, so far as I know, has anyone else, to plead that war is impossible. I have, on the contrary, always urged, with the utmost emphasis that war is not only possible but extremely likely, so long as we remain as ignorant as we are concerning what it can accomplish, and unless we use our energies and efforts to prevent it, instead of directing those efforts to create it. What anti-Bellicists as a whole urge, is not that war is impossible or improbable, but that it is impossible to benefit by it; that conquest must, in the long run, fail to achieve advantage; that the general recognition of this can only add to our security. And incidentally most of us have declared our complete readiness to take any demonstrably necessary measure for the maintenance of armament, but urge that the effort must not stop there.
One is justified in wondering whether the public men—statesmen, soldiers, bishops, preachers, journalists—who indulge in this gibe, are really unable to distinguish between the plea that a thing is unwise, foolish, and the plea that it is impossible; whether they really suppose that anyone in our time could argue that human folly is impossible, or an "illusion." It is quite evidently a tragic reality. Undoubtedly the readiness with which these critics thus fall back upon confusion of thought indicates that they themselves have illimitable confidence in it. But the confusion of thought does not stop here.
I have spoken of Pacifists and Bellicists, but, of course, we are all Pacifists now. Lord Roberts, Lord Charles Beresford, Lord Fisher, Mr. Winston Churchill, The Navy League, the Navier League, the Universal Military Service League, the German Emperor, the Editor of The Spectator, all the Chancelleries of Europe, alike declare that their one object is the maintenance of peace. Never were such Pacifists. The German Emperor, speaking to his army, invariably points out that they stand for the peace of Europe. Does a First Lord want new ships? It is because a strong British Navy is the best guarantee of peace. Lord Roberts wants conscription because that is the one way to preserve peace, and the Editor of The Spectator tells us that Turkey's great crime is that she has not paid enough attention to soldiering and armament, that if only she had been stronger all would have been well. All alike are quite persuaded indeed that the one way to peace is to get more armament.
Well, that is the method that mankind has pursued during the whole of its history; it has never shown the least disposition not to take this advice and not to try this method to the full. And written history, to say nothing of unwritten history, is there to tell us how well it has succeeded.
Unhappily, one has to ask whether some of these military Pacifists really want it to succeed? Again I do not tax any with conscious insincerity. But it does result not merely from what some imply, but from what they say. For certain of these doughty Pacifists having told you how much their one object is to secure peace, then proceed to tell you that this thing which they hope to secure is a very evil thing, that under its blighting influence nations wane in luxury and sloth. And of course they imply that our own nation, about a third of whom have not enough to eat and about another third of whom have a heart-breaking struggle with small means and precariousness of livelihood, is in danger of this degeneration which comes from too much wealth and luxury and sloth and ease. I could fill a dozen books the size of this with the solemn warning of such Pacifists as these against the danger of peace (which they tell you they are struggling to maintain), and how splendid and glorious a thing, how fine a discipline is war (which they tell you they are trying so hard to avoid). Thus the Editor of The Spectator tells us that mankind cannot yet dispense with the discipline of war; and Lord Roberts, that to make war when you are really ready for it (or that in any case for Germany to do it) is "an excellent policy and one to be pursued by every nation prepared to play a great part in history."
The truth is, of course, that we are not likely to get peace from those who believe it to be an evil thing and war and aggression a good thing, or, at least, are very mixed in their views as to this. Before men can secure peace they must at least make up their minds whether it is peace or war they want. If you do not know what you want, you are not likely to get it—or you are likely to get it, whichever way you prefer to put it.
And that is another thing which divides us from the military Pacifists: we really do want peace. As between war and peace we have made our choice, and having made it, stick to it. There may be something to be said for war—for settling a thing by fighting about it instead of by understanding it,—just as there may be something to be said for the ordeal, or the duel, as against trial by evidence, for the rack as a corrective of religious error, for judicial torture as a substitute for cross-examination, for religious wars, for all these things—but the balance of advantage is against them and we have discarded them.
But there is a still further difference which divides us: We have realised that we discarded those things only when we really understood their imperfections and that we arrived at that understanding by studying them, by discussing them,—because one man in London or another in Paris raised plainly and boldly the whole question of their wisdom and because the intellectual ferment created by those interrogations, either in the juridical or religious field, re-acted on the minds of men in Geneva or Wurtenburg or Rome or Madrid. It was by this means, not by improving the rapiers or improving the instruments of the inquisition, that we got rid of the duel and that Catholics ceased to torture Protestants or vice versa. We gave these things up because we realised the futility of physical force in these conflicts. We shall give up war for the same reason.
But the Bellicist says that discussions of this sort, these attempts to find out the truth, are but the encouragement of pernicious theories: there is, according to him, but one way—better rapiers, more and better racks, more and better inquisitions.
Mr. Bonar Law, in one of the very wisest phrases ever pronounced by a statesman, has declared that "war is the failure of human wisdom."
That is the whole case of Pacifism: we shall not improve except at the price of using our reason in these matters; of understanding them better. Surely it is a truism that that is the price of all progress; saner conceptions—man's recognition of his mistakes, whether those mistakes take the form of cannibalism, slavery, torture, superstition, tyranny, false laws, or what you will. The veriest savage, or for that matter the ape, can blindly fight, but whether the animal develops into a man, or the savage into civilized man, depends upon whether the element of reason enters in an increasing degree into the solution of his problems.
The Militarist argues otherwise. He admits the difficulty comes from man's small disposition to think; therefore don't think—fight. We fight, he says, because we have insufficient wisdom in these matters; therefore do not let us trouble to get more wisdom or understanding; all we need do is to get better weapons. I am not misrepresenting him; that is quite fairly the popular line: it is no use talking about these things or trying to explain them, all that is logic and theories; what you want to do is to get a bigger army or more battleships. And, of course, the Bellicist on the other side of the frontier says exactly the same thing, and I am still waiting to have explained to me how, therefore, if this matter depends upon understanding, we can ever solve it by neglecting understanding, which the Militarist urges us to do. Not only does he admit, but pleads, that these things are complex, and supposes that that is an argument why they should not be studied.
And a third distinction will, I think, make the difference between us still clearer. Like the Bellicist, I am in favour of defence. If in a duelling society a duellist attacked me, or, as a Huguenot in the Paris of the sixteenth century a Catholic had attacked me, I should certainly have defended myself, and if needs be have killed my aggressor. But that attitude would not have prevented my doing my small part in the creation of a public opinion which should make duelling or such things as the massacre of St. Bartholomew impossible by showing how unsatisfactory and futile they were; and I should know perfectly well that neither would stop until public opinion had, as the result of education of one kind or another, realised their futility. But it is as certain as anything can be that the Churchills of that society or of that day would have been vociferous in declaring (as in the case of the duel they still to-day declare in Prussia) that this attempt to prove the futility of duelling was not only a bad and pernicious campaign, but was in reality a subtle attempt to get people killed in the street by bullies, and that those who valued their security would do their best to discredit all anti-duelling propaganda—by misrepresentation, if needs be.
Let this matter be quite clear. No one who need be considered in this discussion would think of criticising Lord Roberts for wanting the army, and Mr. Churchill for wanting the navy, to be as good and efficient as possible and as large as necessary. Personally—and I speak, I know, for many of my colleagues in the anti-war movement—I would be prepared to support British conscription if it be demonstrably wise or necessary. But what we criticise is the persistent effort to discredit honest attempts at a better understanding of the facts of international relationship, the everlasting gibe which it is thought necessary to fling at any constructive effort, apart from armament, to make peace secure. These men profess to be friends of peace, they profess to regret the growth of armament, to deplore the unwisdom, ignorance, prejudice and misunderstanding out of which the whole thing grows, but immediately there is any definite effort to correct this unwisdom, to examine the grounds of the prejudice and misunderstanding, there is a volte face and such efforts are sneered at as "sentimental" or "sordid," according as the plea for peace is put upon moral or material grounds. It is not that they disagree in detail with any given proposition looking towards a basis of international co-operation, but that in reality they deprecate raising the matter at all.[9] It must be armaments and nothing but armaments with them. If there had been any possibility of success in that we should not now be entering upon the 8,000th or 9,000th war of written history. Armaments may be necessary, but they are not enough. Our plan is armaments plus education; theirs is armament versus education. And by education, of course, we do not mean school books, or an extension of the School Board curriculum, but a recognition of the fact that the character of human society is determined by the extent to which its units attempt to arrive at an understanding of their relationship, instead of merely subduing one another by force, which does not lead to understanding at all: in Turkey, or Venezuela, or San Domingo, there is no particular effort made to adjust differences by understanding; in societies of that type they only believe in settling differences by armaments. That is why there are very few books, very little thought or discussion, very little intellectual ferment but a great many guns and soldiers and battles. And throughout the world the conflict is going on between these rival schools. On the whole the Western world, inside the respective frontiers, almost entirely now tends to the Pacifist type. But not so in the international field, for where the Powers are concerned, where it is a question of the attitude of one nation in relation to another, you get a degree of understanding rather less than more than that which obtains in the internal politics of Venezuela, or Turkey, or Morocco, or any other "warlike" state.
And the difficulty of creating a better European opinion and temper is due largely to just this idea that obsesses the Militarist, that unless they misrepresent facts in a sensational direction the nations will be too apathetic to arm; that education will abolish funk, and that presumably funk is a necessary element in self-defence.
For the most creditable explanation that we can give of the Militarist's objection to having this matter discussed at all, is the evident impression that such discussion will discourage measures for self-defence; the Militarist does not believe that a people desiring to understand these things and interested in the development of a better European society, can at the same time be determined to resist the use of force. They believe that unless the people are kept in a blue funk, they will not arm, and that is why it is that the Militarist of the respective countries are for ever talking about our degeneration and the rest. And the German Militarist is just as angry with the unwarlike qualities of his people as the English Militarist is with ours.
Just note this parallel:
BRITISH OPINION ON BRITISH APATHY AND GERMAN VIGOUR.
"There is a way in which Britain is certain to have war and its horrors and calamities; it is this—by persisting in her present course of unpreparedness, her apathy, unintelligence, and blindness, and in her disregard of the warnings of the most ordinary political insight, as well as of the example of history.
"Now in the year 1912, just as in 1866, and just as in 1870, war will take place the instant the German forces by land and sea are, by their superiority at every point, as certain of victory as anything in human calculation can be made certain. 'Germany strikes when Germany's hour has struck.' That is the time-honoured policy of her Foreign Office. It is her policy at the present hour, and it is an excellent policy. It is, or should be, the policy of every nation prepared to play a great part in history."—LORD ROBERTS, at Manchester.
"Britain is disunited; Germany is homogeneous. We are quarrelling about the Lords' Veto, Home Rule, and a dozen other questions of domestic politics. We have a Little Navy Party, an Anti-Militarist Party; Germany is unanimous upon the question of naval expansion."—MR. BLATCHFORD.
GERMAN OPINION ON GERMAN APATHY AND BRITISH VIGOUR.
"Whole strata of our nation seem to have lost that ideal enthusiasm which constituted the greatness of its history. With the increase of wealth they live for the moment, they are incapable of sacrificing the enjoyment of the hour to the service of great conceptions, and close their eyes complacently to the duties of our future and to the pressing problems of international life which await a solution at the present time."—GENERAL VON BERNHARDI in "Germany and the Next War."
"There is no one German people, no single Germany…. There are more abrupt contrasts between Germans and Germans than between Germans and Indians."
"One must admire the consistent fidelity and patriotism of the English race, as compared with the uncertain and erratic methods of the German people, their mistrust, and suspicion…. In spite of numerous wars, bloodshed, and disaster, England always emerges smoothly and easily from her military crises and settles down to new conditions and surroundings in her usual cool and deliberate manner, so different from the German."—Berliner Tageblatt, March 14, 1911.
Presumably each doughty warrior knows his own country better than that of the other, which would carry a conclusion directly contrary to that which he draws.
But note also where this idea that it is necessary artificially to stimulate the defensive zeal of each country by resisting any tendency to agreement and understanding leads. It leads even so good a man as Lord Roberts into the trap of dogmatic prophesy concerning the intentions of a very complex heterogeneous nation of 65 million people. Lord Roberts could not possibly tell you what his own country will do five, ten, or fifteen years hence in such matters as Home Rule or the Suffragists, or even the payment of doctors, but he knows exactly what a foreign country will do in a much more serious matter. The simple truth is, of course, that no man knows what "Germany" will do ten years hence, any more than we can know what "England" will do. We don't even know what England will be, whether Unionist or Liberal or Labour, Socialist, Free Trade or Protectionist. All these things, like the question of Peace and War depends upon all sorts of tendencies, drifts and developments. At bottom, of course, since war, in Mr. Bonar Law's fine phrase, is "never inevitable—only the failure of human wisdom," it depends upon whether we become a little less or a little more wise. If the former, we shall have it; if the latter, we shall not. But this dogmatism concerning the other man's evil intentions is the very thing that leads away from wisdom.[10] The sort of temper and ideas which it provokes on both sides of the frontier may be gathered from just such average gems as these plucked recently from the English press:—
Yes, we may as well face it. War with Germany is inevitable, and the only question is—Shall we consult her convenience as to its date? Shall we wait till Germany's present naval programme, which is every year reducing our advantage, is complete? Shall we wait till the smouldering industrial revolution, of which all these strikes are warnings, has broken into flame? Shall we wait till Consols are 65 and our national credit is gone? Shall we wait till the Income Tax is 1s. 6d. in the pound? OR SHALL WE STRIKE NOW—finding every out-of-work a job in connection with the guardianship of our shores, and, with our mighty fleet, either sinking every German ship or towing it in triumph into a British port? Why should we do it? Because the command of the seas is ever ours; because our island position, our international trade and our world-wide dominions demand that no other nation shall dare to challenge our supremacy. That is why. Oh, yes, the cost would be great, but we could raise it to-day all right, and we should get it back.
If the struggle comes to-day, we shall win—and after it is over, there will be abounding prosperity in the land, and no more labour unrest.
Yes, we have no fear of Germany to-day. The only enemy we fear is the crack-brained fanatics who prate about peace and goodwill whilst foreign Dreadnoughts are gradually closing in upon us. As Mr. Balfour said at the Eugenic Conference the other day, man is a wild animal; and there is no room, in present circumstances, for any tame ones.—John Bull, Aug. 24, 1912.
The italics and large type are those of the original, not mine. This paper explains, by the way, in this connection that "In the Chancelleries of Europe John Bull is regarded as a negligible journalistic quantity. But John Bull is read by a million people every week, and that million not the least thoughtful and intelligent section of the community, they think about what they read."
One of the million seems to have thought to some purpose, for the next week there was the following letter from him. It was given the place of honour in a series and runs as follows:—
I would have extended your "Down with the German Fleet!" to "Down with Germany and the Germans!" For, unless the whole —— lot are swept off the surface of the earth, there will be no peace. If the people in England could only realise the quarrelsome, deceitful, underhanded, egotistic any tyrannical character of the Germans, there would not be so much balderdash about a friendly understanding, etc., between England and Germany. The German is a born tyrant. The desire to remain with Britain on good terms will only last so long until Germany feels herself strong enough to beat England both on sea and on land: afterwards it'll simply be "la bourse ou la vie," as the French proverb goes. Provided they do not know that there are any English listeners about, phrases like the following can be heard every day in German restaurants and other public places: "I hate England and the English!" "Never mind, they won't be standing in our way much longer. We shall soon be ready."
And John Bull, with its million readers, is not alone. This is how the Daily Express, in a double-leaded leader, teaches history to its readers:—
When, one day, Englishmen are not allowed to walk the pavements of their cities, and their women are for the pleasure of the invaders, and the offices of the Tiny England newspapers are incinerated by a furious mob; when foreign military officers proclaim martial law from the Royal Exchange steps, and when some billions of pounds have to be raised by taxation—by taxation of the "toiling millions" as well as others—to pay the invaders out, and the British Empire consists of England—less Dover, required for a foreign strategic tunnel—and the Channel Islands—then the ghosts of certain politicians and publicists will probably call a meeting for the discussion of the Fourth Dimension.—Leading Article, Daily Express, 8/7/12.
And not merely shall our women fill the harems of the German pashas, and Englishmen not be allowed to walk upon the pavement (it would be the German way of solving the traffic problem—near the Bank), but a "well-known Diplomat" in another paper tells us what else will happen.
If England be vanquished it means the end of all things as far as she is concerned, and will ring in a new and somewhat terrible era. Bankrupt, shorn of all power, deserted, as must clearly follow, as a commercial state, and groaning under a huge indemnity that she cannot pay and is not intended to be able to pay, what will be the melancholy end of this great country and her teeming population of forty-five millions?
… Her shipping trade will be transferred as far as possible from the English to the German flag. Her banking will be lost, as London will no longer be the centre of commerce, and efforts will be made to enable Berlin to take London's place. Her manufactures will gradually desert her. Failing to obtain payments in due time, estates will be sequestered and become the property of wealthy Germans. The indemnity to be demanded is said to be one thousand millions sterling.
The immediate result of defeat would mean, of course, that insolvency would take place in a very large number of commercial businesses, and others would speedily follow. Those who cannot get away will starve unless large relief funds are forthcoming from, say, Canada and the United States, for this country, bereft of its manufactures, will not be able to sustain a population of more than a very few millions.—From an Article by "A Well-known Diplomatist" in The Throne, June 12, 1912.
These are but samples; and this sort of thing is going on in England and Germany alike. And when one protests that it is wicked rubbish born of funk and ignorance, that whatever happens in war this does not happen, and that it is based on false economics and grows into utterly false conceptions of international relationship, one is shouted down as an anti-armament man and an enemy of his country.
Well, if that view is persisted in, if in reality it is necessary for a people to have lies and nonsense told to them in order to induce them to defend themselves, some will be apt to decide that they are not worth defending. Or rather will they decide that this phase of the pro-armament campaign—which is not so much a campaign in favour of armament as one against education and understanding—will end in turning us into a nation either of poltroons or of bullies and aggressors, and that since life is a matter of the choice of risks it is wiser and more courageous to choose the less evil. A nation may be defeated and still live in the esteem of men—and in its own. No civilized man esteems a nation of Bashi-Bazouks or Prussian Junkers. Of the two risks involved—the risk of attack arising from a possible superiority of armament on the part of a rival, and the risk of drifting into conflict because, concentrating all our energies on the mere instrument of combat, we have taken no adequate trouble to understand the facts of this case—it is at least an arguable proposition that the second risk is the greater. And I am prompted to this expression of opinion without surrendering one iota of a lifelong and passionate belief that a nation attacked should defend itself to the last penny and to the last man.
And you think that this idea that the nations—ours amongst them—may drift into futile war from sheer panic and funk arising out of the terror inspired by phantoms born of ignorance, is merely the idea of Pacifist cranks?
The following, referring to the "precautionary measures" (i.e., mobilization of armies) taken by the various Powers, is from a leading article of the Times:—
"Precautions" are understandable, but the remark of our Berlin Correspondent that they may produce an untenable position from which retreat must be humiliating is applicable in more than one direction. Our Vienna Correspondent truly says that "there is no valid reason to believe war between Austria-Hungary and Russia to be inevitable, or even immediately probable." We entirely agree, but wish we could add that the absence of any valid reason was placing strict limitations upon the scope of "precautions." The same correspondent says he is constantly being asked:—"Is there no means of avoiding war?" The same question is now being asked, with some bewilderment, by millions of men in this country, who want to know what difficulties there are in the present situation which should threaten Europe with a general war, or even a collision larger than that already witnessed…. There is no great nation in Europe which to-day has the least desire that millions of men should be torn from their homes and flung headlong to destruction at the bidding of vain ambitions. The Balkan peoples fought for a cause which was peculiarly their own. They were inspired by the memories of centuries of wrong which they were burning to avenge. The larger nations have no such quarrel, unless it is wilfully manufactured for them. The common sense of the peoples of Europe is well aware that no issue has been presented which could not be settled by amicable discussion. In England men will learn with amazement and incredulity that war is possible over the question of a Servian port, or even over the larger issues which are said to lie behind it. Yet that is whither the nations are blindly drifting Who, then, makes war? The answer is to be found in the Chancelleries of Europe, among the men who have too long played with human lives as pawns in a game of chess, who have become so enmeshed in formulas and the jargon of diplomacy that they have ceased to be conscious of the poignant realities with which they trifle. And thus will war continue to be made, until the great masses who are the sport of professional schemers and dreamers say the word which, shall bring, not eternal peace, for that is impossible, but a determination that wars shall be fought only in a just and righteous and vital cause. If that word is ever to be spoken, there never was a more appropriate occasion than the present; and we trust it will be spoken while there is yet time.
And the very next day there appeared in the Daily Mail an article by
Mr. Lovat Fraser ending thus:—
The real answer rests, or ought to rest, with the man in the train.
Does he want to join in Armageddon? It is time that he began to
think about it, for his answer may soon be sought.
Now we have here, stated in the first case by the most authoritative of English newspapers, and in the second by an habitual contributor of the most popular, the whole case of Pacifism as I have attempted to expound it, namely: (1) That our current statecraft—its fundamental conceptions, its "axioms," its terminology—has become obsolete by virtue of the changed conditions of European society; that the causes of conflict which it creates are half the time based on illusions, upon meaningless and empty formulas; (2) that its survival is at bottom due to popular ignorance and indifference—the survival on the part of the great mass of just those conceptions born of the old and now obsolete conditions—since diplomacy, like all functions of government, is a reflection of average opinion; (3) that this public opinion is not something which descends upon us from the skies but is the sum of the opinions of each one of us and is the outcome of our daily contacts, our writing and talking and discussion, and that the road to safety lies in having that general public opinion better informed not in directly discouraging such better information; (4) that the mere multiplication of "precautions" in the shape of increased armaments and a readiness for war, in the absence of a corresponding and parallel improvement of opinion, will merely increase and not exorcise the danger, and, finally, (5) that the problem of war is necessarily a problem of at least two parties, and that if we are to solve it, to understand it even, we must consider it in terms of two parties, not one; it is not a question of what shall be the policy of each without reference to the other, but what the final upshot of the two policies taken in conjunction will be.
Now in all this the Times, especially in one outstanding central idea, is embodying a conception which is the antithesis of that expressed by Militarists of the type of Mr. Churchill, and, I am sorry to say, of Lord Roberts. To these latter war is not something that we, the peoples of Europe, create by our ignorance and temper, by the nursing of old and vicious theories, by the poorness and defects of the ideas our intellectual activities have developed during the last generation or two, but something that "comes upon us" like the rain or the earthquake, and against which we can only protect ourselves by one thing: more arms, a greater readiness to fight.
In effect the anti-Educationalists say this: "What, as practical men, we have to do, is to be stronger than our enemy; the rest is theory and does not matter."
Well the inevitable outcome of such an attitude is catastrophe.
I have said elsewhere that in this matter it seems fatally easy to secure either one of two kinds of action: that of the "practical man" who limits his energies to securing a policy which will perfect the machinery of war and disregard anything else; or that of the idealist, who, persuaded of the brutality or immorality of war, is apt to show a certain indifference concerning self-defence. What is needed is the type of activity which will include both halves of the problem: provision for education, for a Political Reformation in this matter, as well as such means of defence as will meantime counterbalance the existing impulse to aggression. To concentrate on either half to the exclusion of the other half is to render the whole problem insoluble.
What must inevitably happen if the nations take the line of the "practical man," and limit their energies simply and purely to piling up armaments?
A critic once put to me what he evidently deemed a poser: "Do you urge that we shall be stronger than our enemy, or weaker?"
To which I replied: "The last time that question was asked me was in Berlin, by Germans. What would you have had me reply to those Germans?"—a reply which, of course, meant this: In attempting to find the solution of this question in terms of one party, you are attempting the impossible. The outcome will be war, and war would not settle it. It would all have to be begun over again.
The Navy League catechism says: "Defence consists in being so strong that it will be dangerous for your enemy to attack you."[11] Mr. Churchill, however, goes farther than the Navy League, and says: "The way to make war impossible is to make victory certain."
The Navy League definition is at least possible of application to practical politics, because rough equality of the two parties would make attack by either dangerous. Mr. Churchill's principle is impossible of application to practical politics, because it could only be applied by one party, and would, in the terms of the Navy League principle, deprive the other party of the right of defence. As a matter of simple fact, both the Navy League, by its demand for two ships to one, and Mr. Churchill, by his demand for certain victory, deny in this matter Germany's right to defend herself; and such denial is bound, on the part of a people animated by like motives to ourselves, to provoke a challenge. When the Navy League says, as it does, that a self-respecting nation should not depend upon the goodwill of foreigners for its safety, but upon its own strength, it recommends Germany to maintain her efforts to arrive at some sort of equality with ourselves. When Mr. Churchill goes further and says that a nation should be so strong as to make victory over its rivals certain, he knows that if Germany were to adopt his own doctrine its inevitable outcome would be war.