We may notice a not unexpected coincidence which the Resident Commissioner apparently omits to mention. It is that "professed Christianity," by insisting on the propriety of cotton garments for the islanders hitherto well clad in a film of coco-nut oil and a "riri or kilt of finely worked leaves," is conferring a very appreciable benefit on the Manchester trade in "cotton goods." "Our colonial markets have steadily grown," says the Encyclopædia, "and will yearly become of greater value." ...

On the same day as the issue of the Manchester Guardian just quoted there appeared in the Times Literary Supplement a review of Canon C. H. Robinson's History of Christian Missions, "a very sound introduction to a vast and fascinating study." From this I gather that

So before Europe has shown many signs of convalescence, Africa is already virulently infected. And "our markets will yearly become of greater value."

§ 8

Restricted Sphere of Government corresponding to Restricted Sphere of Morality

But to return to our sheep, or rather to those who fleece them,—there is one cardinal proof that trade, in so far as it depends on private enterprise, is a danger to the State, and is recognised as such. It is that as soon as war comes, the nation in danger instinctively adopts whatever measure of Socialism can be introduced during the temporary inhibition of capitalistic methods. The actual coming of war induces a brief panic in the marketplace, and during this momentary paralysis of private acquisitors the State makes a desperate attempt to subdue their activities to its own needs. By the mere instinct of self-preservation it clutches at some rudiment of Socialism, and makes a diffident gesture in the direction of nationalisation—(of the railways, for instance). But the capitalists of England can point with pride to the fact that they very soon pulled themselves together. I hope to show in the following chapter that by the time the war was in full swing they had made it their own, and had banished every trace of socialism, with the relics of sanity and truth, to the confines of the Labour press.[31]

But still the danger was for the moment realised, and the attempt was made, the desperate and unsuccessful attempt to pull and squeeze and bind the institutions of capitalism into an organised system of political obligations. It failed because the very abuses and intemperances of our commercial system are a sign that the sphere of government has not expanded with the growing complications of the modern community. Nevertheless the attempt was made: but no corresponding effort is being made to extend the system of moral obligations in which we live.

For it is just as the sphere of morality is unduly restricted and fails to correspond to the needs of humanity, that, on the political plane, the unduly restricted sphere of government has never been extended to include all the interrelations of industrial citizenship. Capitalism is a survival of the penultimate stage of political development, as war is a survival of the penultimate stage of morality.

The attempts both spasmodic and continuous to extend the sphere of government, which now begin to affect nearly all serious legislation, must remain incomplete without an analogous and indeed corollary expansion of the moral system which will involve the obsolescence of war.

CHAPTER III

§ 1

Trade during the War

Trade during the war seems to have had a remarkably good time. In the first year of warfare I began to collect a few facts in support of what then seemed the paradoxical view that war was, in essence if not in origin, a very profitable capitalistic manœuvre; a view deduced from the opinion I had formed a priori of the nature of all modern warfare.[32] Instead of a few corroborating voices I found testimony abundant in every paper I picked up, besides the live evidence received in private letters and conversations. This pamphlet being rather philosophic than statistical, I have taken the easy course of printing a selection of these testimonies, crude and undigested, in an appendix—a cold storage of facts and figures that allows me to repeat with a quiet conscience that trade is booming. The greater the war, apparently, the greater the profits. In the words of the Manchester Guardian:—

And so forth.[34]

To this I will add only two typical paragraphs as a text for my subsequent remarks, as I believe they suggest the general economic process which enriches the particular industries to which they refer. The first is taken from the Sunday Pictorial, of all papers.[35]

The next quotation is from the New Statesman:—[36]

Here, before passing on to more general considerations, we may notice incidentally—it is brought out in the first quotation—that the taxation of war profits reduces them proportionately but can never annul or quite overtake them. That is sufficiently obvious; but the fact must be preliminarily emphasised because it is quite commonly assumed that the mere imposition of a tax of 50 or 60 or 75 per cent automatically solves the problem of war profits. As a matter of fact, taxation so far from solving the problem leaves it essentially unchanged, and really connives at and recognises the practice. The problem remains, in spite of taxation, that one section of the nation is enriched by a process which necessitates the misery and death of other sections. We may therefore in a broad discussion of the problem leave out of account the proposed and adopted palliatives of taxation.

Secondly, we may notice—this is brought out in the second quotation—that profits directly produced by the war are not limited to the period of the war. This again is really axiomatic, being only another form of the platitude that it takes longer to construct than to destroy: but it means that even a short war of sufficient intensity will ensure a long period of profits, and therefore it noticeably aggravates the conclusions to which I hope to lead.

A fundamental point is that the profit on freights, excused immediately by the destruction of shipping,[38] leads indirectly to profits on such other commodities as food and coal, not only on account of the actual scarcity resulting, but also because any reason for increasing prices is made a pretext for increasing profits.

But the scarcity of all general commodities is caused not only indirectly by the primary scarcity of ships, but also directly by the same conditions of warfare as those which affect shipping. That is to say, just as the intensified activity of the nation at war creates a livelier demand for ships, so it also creates a greater demand for all the ordinary commodities of living: and just as war by destroying ships reduces the available supply, so by its general destructiveness it reduces the supply of other commodities: and just as war by destroying ships makes extraordinary profits for shipowners, so by destroying tables and teacups it makes unusual profits for the makers of tables and teacups. In short, destruction creates demand, and demand gives occasion for profit.

This is a disquieting statement; because though one might hesitate to deduce from it that any particular merchant must be in his commercial capacity a conscious advocate of war for the sake of gain, it certainly suggests that the body of trade must automatically and by a sort of instinct of self-preservation be an element in the nation that makes for war.

That is the kernel of my thesis;[39] and it is certainly a happy coincidence that the possibility of its truth seems at last to be dawning on another writer, and one more expert than myself in the handling of commercial theory. On the very morning after the last few sentences were written the following paragraph occurred in Mr. Emil Davies' "City" article in the New Statesman:—[40]

§ 2

Trade lives on Increasing Demand

All war, whatever temporary dislocation of business it may involve, must ultimately, as a principal form of destruction, assist the intensive cultivation of demand which constitutes nearly the whole of modern trade. The industrial revolution of the nineteenth century with all its labour-saving machines was originally an economy of necessary production; by the middle of the century it overshot its mark, and hastened the world to the brink of the opposite disaster of over-production. In the present commercial era we are still suspended over that dreadful brink. Nothing can stop the accelerated flux of mechanical production; and we are saved from falling into the abyss only by the unnatural increase of ordinary consumption. The consumption of the ordinary markets, even when stimulated by the most violent tonics of advertisement, is strictly limited, and the limits have long been overtaken. The accelerated consumption could only be maintained by the discovery of new markets, which was undertaken by means of the political catch-words of Imperialism and Colonial Expansion;[41] or else by the wholesale destruction of existing supplies. As the number of new markets and their capacity for consuming things they don't want is ultimately just as limited as the number and capacity of home markets (for obviously the time must come when all the Chinamen and Koutso-Vlachs and South Sea Islanders have already been supplied with ready-made brown boots and tinned salmon), only one method remained by which Commerce and Industry might escape, or at least postpone, the penalty of half a century of over-production. This was by the partial destruction of the world's existing supplies. If this could be arranged, there might be a genuine demand for them to be replaced.

§ 3

War a form of Destruction

Now as a form of destruction war is easily first. Quite apart from the obvious destruction of commodities that takes place when a country is ravaged and invaded, as in the case of Belgium and Northern France, it should be remembered that the methods of supplying an army in the field involve the sheer waste or destruction of very nearly half the food and equipment provided.[42] This is not necessarily the result, as might be expected, of official incompetence. It may on the contrary be the result of official foresight, which must allow in warfare for all the changes and chances of communication, and knows that it is better to waste a million tons of beef than to risk the starvation of a single regiment. Such waste, in other words, is a condition of warfare. Add to this the preventive destruction of stores and baggage which takes place whenever troops are compelled to retreat: in this way about a million pounds' worth of stores were carefully burned before the evacuation of Gallipoli; and not a hundred yards of trench is ever abandoned without the jettison of about a hundred pounds' worth of equipment. Add to this the fact that every shot fired, from the mere rifle bullet to the largest shell, does a proportionate amount of material damage when it finds its billet: the bursting of a six-inch shell will do, I suppose, on an average, as much damage in half a second as an ordinary fire can do in twenty-four hours. Add to this again the fact that the very force which propels every bullet and every shell is released by destroying by instantaneous combustion a certain amount of valuable chemical products. Then, besides all this direct destruction of commodities which must ultimately be replaced, or which at least some kind contractor may plausibly offer to replace, consider for a moment the increased wear and tear of every sort of equipment both civil and military, from steam-rollers and rolling-stock to boots and bandages and walking-sticks, which a state of war must involve. Or consider again that the mere mobilisation of an army implies that several hundred thousand men, whose annual income before was less than £100 a year, are now living at the rate of £400 a year.[43]

Anyone who cares to examine in detail all these forms of waste and destruction, and all these forms of unnatural and feverish consumption, will begin to understand to what an extent war stimulates the demand by which alone Trade can survive.

§ 4

War stands to benefit Neutral as well as Belligerent Nations but not to the same extent

In Western Europe at least all markets are practically open markets. No tariff however scientifically graduated will really divert the natural flow of trade to any considerable extent.[44] Consequently it might appear that all nations stand to benefit in the same way, but in varying degrees, from the intense local demand set up in the nation at war. Thus British Trade was exhorted in a sincerely rapacious article by Captain Dixon-Johnson[45] to snatch the opportunity presented by the Balkan War; and the unparalleled boom in American trade during the present war is another obvious example. This suggests at once that the benefit occasioned by war is not a national benefit, diffused vertically through every class of the belligerent nation; but a class benefit diffused as it were horizontally through the commercial strata of all nations within supplying distance of the centre of disturbance. On the other hand, of course, the immediate local demand is stronger than the demand communicated to remoter markets and more easily supplied; in other words the commercial class of the belligerent nation are more immediately and more intensely benefited by the state of war than the same classes of neighbouring nations, although in war as in peace the commercial classes of every nation are one.[46] Also the outbreak of war, even if it does not entirely sever a country from foreign sources of supply, is bound to cause a certain dislocation; if communications are not altogether interrupted they are more difficult and uncertain than in normal times; so that the trade of the belligerent country is always given a greater impetus than that of its neutral neighbours, and in such cases a particular industry which has been threatened by the competition of foreign imports may be actually rescued from extinction. Even the temporary dislocation of trade is a benefit to trade in the nation at war; for it enables existing stocks to be sold at exaggerated prices.[47]

§ 5

The greater the Capital, the greater the War Profit?

The over-production in modern industrial states, from which Trade can only be saved by some such catastrophic remedy as war, may be attributed not only to the tyranny of machines, but also to the financial jugglery known as over-capitalisation. If it could be shown that over-capitalisation were a consequence of national wealth it would follow that the richer nations would enjoy a greater benefit from war than their poorer neighbours. But this will only be true if we do not measure national wealth by the average wealth of every citizen; if we speak in this case of national wealth quite apart from any question of its equitable distribution, and are careful to distinguish it from national welfare; a wealthy nation in this case would have to mean a nation blessed with a class of wealthy capitalists, or supporting a large parasitic colony of the persons described as financiers; and such a nation would have as a corollary to be blessed with a class of workers disproportionately large and disproportionately poor. For if industrial conditions are fair over-production is impossible.

§ 6

The Blessings of Invasion

If war is regarded primarily as a commercial stimulant, we might carry the argument farther and conclude that invasion and even ravage are actually beneficial to the trade of a country that suffers them; for ultimately they must make way for a direct demand on the spot for the primary commodities of life. Houses, fences, roads, factories will all have to be replaced. It is obvious that the war will have to be followed by a time of rebuilding.[48] It might be urged that such a phase of convalescence would be retarded or altogether prevented by the lack of private capital for such an enormous enterprise. But private capital, thanks to the credit system, is practically inexhaustible so long as it is required for a genuinely productive purpose: and even if it failed in this case to come forward, the money required would certainly be advanced out of the indemnity which will have to be provided for the invaded provinces, or would be guaranteed in some other way by the Government concerned. In which case Trade, even after the conclusion of peace, would rejoice in another period of Government contracts. If it be admitted, however, that we have not sufficient data to make this suggestion more than probable, we can at any rate be certain of the effect produced by the mere numbers of an invading army or a defensive garrison. The Jewish traders of Salonica enjoyed a time of unexampled prosperity in 1912 and 1913, owing to the mere presence of the Turkish, the Greek and the Bulgarian armies, to whom they sold out at their own prices.[49] They are now repeating the process with the English and French armies; and in the interval they were kept busy restocking the Macedonian villages depleted or destroyed during the campaign of 1912. As for the small shopkeepers of Flanders any member of the British Expeditionary Force will tell you that they are at present so prosperous that even a German bombardment will hardly drive them from their counters.

§ 7

The Luxury Trades don't do so badly

The most obvious if not the only exception to our tale of war profits is to be found in the case of the parasitic industries which specialise in the production of the unnecessary. It is not easy rigidly to define the luxury trade, for the luxury of one generation is the necessity of the next; but it is enough to suggest a broad idea of the industries that fall under this heading. "The income-tax assessments show," says The Times,[50] speaking of Berlin after nine months of war, "that among the trades which have suffered most are fruiterers, breweries, public-houses, bars, cafés, chemists and perfumers, goldsmiths and silversmiths, jewellers, milliners, furniture and piano dealers, and music and booksellers. Landowners, land speculators, builders and the carrying trade have also suffered." We may also notice that in the early months of the war Florence, the great market of the shoddy "souvenir" and the "tourist's delight," suffered a good deal more than London, although Italy still remained neutral. In London itself a good example of the parasitic industry are the firms which make ingeniously useless silver toys for rich people to give each other at Christmas.[51]

Many such industries may indeed have suffered in England, although many of the trades mentioned in the Berlin list have not been affected in London, and at least two of them have made conspicuous profits. But in any case it is probable that they suffered if at all only during the first period of the war, when the general feeling of strangeness and insecurity was strong enough to inhibit the shopping instinct of the wealthier classes. As soon as these became accustomed to the state of war they reverted with even greater energy to their old pastime of spending money: and meanwhile the luxury trades had acquired an entirely new set of customers, for a large part of the profits accumulated in other trades were now being spent by a newly enriched class who were unaccustomed to save, for the simple reason that they had never before been in a position to do so. Consequently the luxury trades after a year of war had not only recouped their temporary losses but were doing a bigger business than ever. The natural adaptability of the trades which pander to fashion must also be taken into account. A number of them after the first panic recaptured the failing demand by advertising very simple modifications of their ordinary supply. Some, for instance, turned to the manufacture of equally plausible superfluities of military equipment—such as silver and gold identity disks and watches with luminous dials and queer little hieroglyphs in place of the ordinary figures. Trades already so well organised for exploitation could easily defeat any general attempt at social economy. Thus for women of the upper middle class the most obvious form of war economy was to carry on with only a slight alteration of last year's dresses; and such was their declared intention when their hands were forced by the Dressmakers' revolutionary change in the fashion which substituted the full skirt for the tight skirt of 1913-14. The extraordinary ingenuity of this move was, not only that it thwarted any good intention of not buying a new dress this year, it being manifestly impossible to "alter" a tight skirt into a crinoline, but also that the extra cloth required for the unusually full skirts more than compensated the trade for the continued abstention of a few unfashionable obstinates, as well as for the extra cost of labour.[52]

§ 8

Trade Profits in war not shared by the Nation but confined to Employers

The trade profits which are thus directly stimulated by the conditions of war, do not imply the prosperity of the Trade as a whole, if a Trade is understood to mean a certain section of the nation including in a sort of guild or hierarchy representatives of every class engaged in a particular Trade. They do imply the prosperity of a particular class, for they are all employers' profits, profits on the capital involved. Unfortunately the profits of the Capitalists do not involve the profits of the Labourers, and cannot therefore be tested by statistics of unemployment. But of course the fluctuations of unemployment do very materially affect the opportunities of Trade, and it might reasonably be argued that the apparent profits created by War are really modified by the conditions of the Labour market or otherwise equitably distributed among the general population. Unfortunately it is quite easy to show that the one policy of employers during the present war has been to maintain their profits without any concern for the general population, and that the effect of war has been to increase the profits of Capital not only by increasing the demand but also by making the Employers increasingly independent of the labourers' claims.

At the beginning of War the Employer, on the grounds of general insecurity and "not knowing what was going to happen next," cut down wages and raised the cry of "Business as Usual"; which meant that business was so much better than usual that he was afraid it could not possibly last. So he cut down wages, laughed at buyers who offered him the usual prices, and charged £48 a ton for hides and 6s. 10d. for a yard of cloth that usually cost half a crown. If the private buyer would not pay his prices the Government would. It was indeed too good to last, for such prosperity became impossible to conceal:[53] it also reduced the margin of unemployment on which he had always depended, and he soon found himself obliged to return to the normal rate of wages which he had paid before the war. He was disappointed to find that "Business as Usual" meant wages as usual, but he struggled on, imploring the assistance of the Government in order to "capture Germany's Trade." Worse was to follow: after nine months of war recruiting for the army had begun in earnest, and "there was on the whole less unemployment in Great Britain than at any previous moment in the present century."[54] But he was determined to "carry on," and for the sake of the Government introduced child labour into his workshops.[55] Meanwhile, however, the cost of living was steadily rising, and after a year of war, and of profits, the labourers' demand for an increase of wages could not be altogether ignored. The employer decided to carry the war into the enemy's country. The nation must hang together, he said, and all work was practically national work. So he boldly accused his workmen of lack of patriotism, and roundly declared that "but for the trade unions the war would probably have been over by this time, with a victory for the Allies.... Organised labour is the rotten limb of the body politic, which must be cut off if health is to be restored to the system."[56] It was hard work, but in spite of the shortage of labour and in spite of the rise in the cost of living, he managed to hold wages down by repeating that any demand for a rise in wages was unpatriotic.[57] One by one, on the plea of urgent Government work, he obtained the suspension of all Trade Union rules and thus deprived his workmen of even the natural rights of negotiation; and when after fifteen months of war they again ventured to raise their voices on the Clyde, he openly accused them of being paid by German agitators.[58] On the whole therefore he has been extraordinarily successful in keeping his profits to himself, and as the present demand is likely to continue for some time after the war, his chief anxiety at present is to maintain after the war the compulsory relaxation of Trade Union rules which nothing less than war could accomplish. The slight danger that a prolonged war may kill off a considerable part of his margin of unemployment is more than balanced by his successful introduction of women's labour: and he means that War, in addition to the actual profits of his Trade, shall give him the enormous potential advantage of having broken the Trade Unions.[59]

§ 9

Trade Profit and National Loss

It need not therefore be supposed that the War Profits, of which there is such abundant evidence, conflict at all with Mr. Norman Angell's contention[60] that all modern war, even if the military operations end in a military success, is futile and unprofitable from the national point of view. The general truth seems to be that War, whether it be apparently victorious or apparently unsuccessful, is always profitable for a small commercial class in each belligerent nation.[61] Unfortunately the profits thus earned by the economic effects of war are not diffused vertically throughout the whole nation from top to bottom, but rather horizontally along a shallow commercial stratum in every nation. In every nation war diminishes the national wealth, but concentrates the residue with greater inequality in one particular class. The representative of this class, commonly called the Capitalist, is the real cosmopolitan, because his interests in each belligerent nation are identical, and the war, successful or not, contributes to his financial advantage. It is an illuminating coincidence that the classes in every nation which most enthusiastically demand the violent prosecution of the war seem to be proportionately anxious to annul the hardly-won privileges of democracy. Thus the Saturday Review, in a passage already quoted, solemnly, openly and unforgettably declares the secret wishes of the militarists; and we may be surprised to consider how many safeguards of democracy, how many rights of free thought and free speech, how many of the precarious limitations of sweating and child-labour and wage-slavery have been quietly suppressed since the beginning of the war. But if war is ultimately unprofitable for the nation as a whole, it might be argued that Trade itself must ultimately be involved in the national loss. The answer is that even if the Trader's interests were identical with those of the nation and were ultimately bound to suffer with the nation as a whole, he would undoubtedly ignore the possibility of a loss so much remoter than his immediate and obvious profits; especially as he is certainly ignorant of the economic fact that in modern times military victory and military defeat are equally unprofitable, and if he ever did pause to consider the results for the whole nation he would certainly, perhaps in good faith, identify the national interest with his own, and assume, for psychological rather than economic reasons, that his own interests demanded a military victory; real ignorance and emotional excitement sufficing to explain his apparently hypocritical professions of patriotism. As a matter of fact however his private interests are not dependent on those of the whole nation; for commercial wealth is not the same as national wealth, and prosperous Trade is quite consistent with national unhappiness. The average citizen of Switzerland is more contented than the average citizen of any of the great commercial powers of the world; and some of the causes that make for commercial prosperity, causes of which War is not the least effective, actually decrease the civic efficiency of the greater number of the population, and reduce their chances of happiness. "If an expanding trade," writes Mr. R. B. Cunninghame Graham,[62] "is the sure sign of national happiness clearly the four countries, the figures of whose trade are tabulated (Chile, Peru, Brazil and Argentine) should be amongst the happiest in the world. Yet still a doubt creeps in whether expanding Trade is the sure test of happiness; for recently I have revisited some of the countries of the River Plate that I knew thirty years ago, and it appears to me that they were happier then. True, they were not so rich.... Wealth has increased, but so has poverty...."

War is an artificial process for accelerating that concentration of wealth in the hands of a small class which distinguishes the present unholy stage of political development.[63]

CHAPTER IV

§ 1

Dialectics round the Death-bed

Philosophical aloofness is all very well in its way, but while we argue about economic causes and attempt to induce a philosophy of earthquakes, our bright young democracy lies bleeding under the ruins. The urgent necessity is a little first aid, a little cessation of the killing. I don't know how many young men in different parts of the world have been deliberately and scientifically murdered during the writing of this protest. England alone, who has been criticised for her delay in exposing her youth to the slaughter, is having about half a million of her best citizens stabbed or pierced or crushed or mutilated or poisoned or torn to pieces in one year[64] of modern warfare. And life is not the only instrument of vital progress that is being thrown away. Britannia has beaten her trident into a shovel, and with it is shovelling gold; and not only gold, but youth and love and happiness into the deep sea. The belligerent nations are frantically engaged in destroying two thousand years of education and all the accumulated capital of humanity. Only the enemies of civilisation, the sellers of arms and the sowers of hatred, are growing rich on its ruins. It is impossible to deny that the longer the war continues the greater will be the subsequent sufferings, spiritual and material, of every nation engaged. It is impossible to maintain that any nation or class or individual will be any better in any respect for the Great War, with the single exception of that parasitic class who, as a class, and therefore perhaps not consciously, are chiefly responsible for its inception. We must have Peace first and congresses afterwards. The survivors of civilisation cannot discuss a lasting settlement while they are still under fire.

§ 2

German Responsibility for the War

Nor is it necessary to continue the slaughter while we argue about which belligerent must bear the chief responsibility for the outbreak. The dialectical exercises of the German Chancellor and Mr. Asquith are so futile that they remind us only of two naughty children who drag out their squabble with stubborn outcries of "He began it." The first consideration is to stop fighting. Such academic discussions are necessarily endless, for the simple reason that every nation has its faults, to which criminal motives can always be attached: every nation has its fools, whom its enemies can describe as typical representatives. The question of responsibility for the Great War must be left to the historians of the future. I am quite confident (though even Viscount Grey or Professor Gilbert Murray cannot prove) that they will hold Germany responsible: but I am equally confident that the blame they throw on the nation responsible for the war will be less pronounced than the praise they will reserve for the nation which first has the courage to speak of peace. My belief in Germany's responsibility is based largely on German apologetics and strengthened by the evidence of commercial conditions in Germany before the outbreak. Professor Millioud, for instance, has shown that "German industry was built up on a top-heavy system of credit, unable to keep solvent without expansion, and unable to expand sufficiently without war."[65] Or if a good working test of German responsibility were needed it would be sufficient to point out that no nation innocent of aggressive intentions would have drafted such an ultimatum as that which Austria, with German connivance, sent to Serbia; and that no nation anxious for war would have drafted such a conciliatory reply as that which Serbia returned to Austria by Russia's instructions. It is in fact clear that as long ago as 1913 Austria had determined to crush Serbia, and that in 1913 that determination was only postponed; and postponed not, as we thought at the time, by the tact of Lord Grey at the Conference of London, but only by Italy's refusal to join in the adventure, as we now know from the revelations of San Giuliano and Salandra. Similarly, knowing as we do that England is no exception to the rule that no imperial nation can be wholly compact of righteousness, we might hesitate to accept The Times' version of British innocence, and we might hesitate to accept Lord Bryce's report on the German atrocities in Belgium, knowing as we do that it is based almost entirely on the hearsay evidence of refugees who would be anxious to distinguish themselves as witnesses from the general ruck of destitution; but it happens that the general charges of German aggressiveness and German brutality are fully corroborated by German literature.[66] Unfortunately these distinctions between brutal and chevaleresque methods of warfare remain only questions of method; they concern manners rather than morals, and are as irrelevant to our hopes for the abolition of war as the questions of diplomatic method already mentioned.[67] Equally irrelevant, in any discussion of the possibility of substituting "compulsory arbitration" for war, is the attempt to distinguish between aggressive and defensive war, or to throw all the blame of aggression on either of the two belligerents; for the simple reason that each belligerent will perhaps never believe and will quite certainly never admit that his own intentions were anything but defensive or altruistic.[68] The locus classicus for such protestations of innocence occurs in the Italian Green Book, where Austrian diplomats may be found declaring, with every appearance of sincerity, that the invasion of Serbia was a purely defensive measure. And in a sense, in such a well-armed continent, every aggression is indeed a fore-arming against the future. It might also be suggested that the crime of aggression is an offence not against an individual but against the peace of the community: and until the European community is constituted the guilt of such a crime cannot be brought home to either of the belligerents.

§ 3

The Value of German Culture

The question whether Germany is actually attempting or would be justified in attempting to impose her culture on the rest of Europe; or whether England has good reasons for the limitation or suppression of German culture, is another side-issue. German culture (in Matthew Arnold's correct use of the word, meaning, that is, the average of intellectual and social civilisation), has not on a general inspection much to be proud of. The modern literature of Germany is largely a transcription of Russian, French and English authors, and it is significant that among foreign authors the widest success is reserved for purveyors of le faux bon, writers whose work is distinguished by its spirited failure quite to attain the first-class.[69] The most promising of modern authors writing in the German language, Schnitzler, is an Austrian Jew. Hauptmann, the most distinguished and original of German dramatists, has for thirty years been writing plays which would pass for imitations of Mr. John Galsworthy's failures. Sudermann's style reminds one of a snail crawling over the Indian lilies which he describes.... Germany, it is true, has reason to be proud of her theatres, but that is a matter of State enterprise, rather than an indication of national culture. The German State has been efficient enough to perceive that good theatres are a fundamental necessity of national education, and that good theatres, owing to the excessive rents they have to pay, can never be kept going without a State subsidy. But these admirable theatres can hardly be called the vehicles of a high native culture. Their famous Reinhardts are more efficient only because more acquisitive than our own Jewish impresarios. The ideas they have acquired are chiefly Russian or English: and they have profited by the ideas of Granville Barker and Gordon Craig in order to produce the plays of Shakespeare and Shaw—(just as industrial Germany profited by the ideas of Bessemer[70] and Perkins). Germany's claim to artistic vitality, to genuinely original culture, can be supported only by a certain distinct excellence in sculpture and caricature, two arts which often seem to go hand in hand, perhaps because both are based on a precise simplification of form. But for the activity of a small band of sculptors and caricaturists centred for the most part in Munich,[71] we might be content to regard Germany not as a fount of culture but rather as one of the world's workshops, a well-organised ergastulum for dealing with the drudgery of modern civilisation, for manipulating secondary products and extracting derivatives, a large factory for the production of dictionaries, drugs and electrical machinery.[72]

The extraordinary efficiency of Germany, as a workshop, is not due to any intellectual pre-eminence of the nation as a whole. It is most clearly and emphatically due to the fact that the German autocracy, whatever its political iniquity, has had the intelligence and the national solidarity to choose its business men from among the brains of the community. In Germany any man of conspicuous intellectual capacity may be picked out, roughly speaking, and assigned to the direction of a particular industry. In England we achieve inefficiency by the contrary process, and are only willing to regard a man as capable and revere him as an "expert" if he happens to have been occupied exclusively for a certain number of years in the narrow routine of a particular subject. This pernicious fallacy of the "Expert" is actually preached in England as a means to the very Efficiency which in fact it almost invariably excludes. It is commonly assumed that no man can write a good play unless he has been a bad actor, or that a retired admiral, quite incapable of grasping any general idea that was not popular in the Navy twenty years ago or in the smoking-room of his club, would be better able to direct the affairs of the Navy than Mr. Winston Churchill or Mr. Balfour.[73] There is a similar outcry for a government of "Business Men," although anyone who happens to have heard a couple of average business men discuss a problem of their own business in one of their own offices will hardly be able to deny that a capable poet and a capable painter would have settled the question in a quarter of the time. Instead of superstitiously believing that only "Business Men" can be efficient, Germany picks out her business men (and her bureaucrats) for their general efficiency. She has attained efficiency by abandoning the fallacy of the Expert in favour of the maxim of Confucius—"the Higher type of man is not like a vessel which is designed for some special use."[74]

But from the fact that German industry and German theatres are better managed than our own it does not follow that there is any natural or national antagonism between England and Germany. The real hatred of Germany if it exists in England at all should be found among what it is becoming the fashion to call "the intelligentsia." Such a purely intellectual hatred of the sentimental melodrama of Faust and of the semitic luxuriance of Wagner and Reinhardt is not likely to become a democratic motive in England. Here brains are always unpopular, and Park Lane will never be stormed by the mob until it is inhabited by the Bernard Shaws, the Lowes Dickinsons and the Bertrand Russells, instead of by German financiers.

There is no national hatred between England and Germany. The two peoples are natural friends. Even the men in the trenches (or perhaps I should say particularly the men in the trenches), fraternise with their opponents whenever they get the chance.[75] Even now a press campaign of a few months would suffice to make Germany popular in England; and if that were ever to happen, which is not improbable, only the "intellectuals," who are most strongly opposed to this war, would still find much to dislike, but not to fight about, in the national culture produced by the German character.

§ 4

The Manufacture of Hatred

But if there is no natural hatred between the two belligerent protagonists, there is a feverish production of the artificial variety. Indeed this diligent manufacture of hatred is probably the most demoralising result of warfare, particularly disastrous in its ethical effect on the individual. It proceeds by the ordinary methods of deceit, suppression of the true and suggestion of the untrue, and by means of the newspapers this process of moral degeneration is sometimes actively directed, sometimes only permitted or encouraged by the Governments concerned. The London press is always ready to swallow the pathetic fabrications of unscrupulous refugees, and publishes with joy any Rotterdam rumour about German bestiality; but refuses to print any report however authentic which ventures to suggest that the Germans are as human as ourselves. There was, for instance, a Canadian woman, Dr. Scarlett-Synge, who under the aegis of her medical diploma, returned from Serbia through Germany, and discovered that some of the German internment camps are not as bad as they are commonly believed to be. Whatever her qualifications and opportunities for forming a correct opinion, and they happen to have been particularly good, there is no doubt that this woman's report was of the highest interest. Yet not a single daily paper in England would consider its publication, on the ground presumably that it might reduce the national inflammation and thereby "prejudice recruiting." As if true patriotism, sane and lovely, had anything to do with the pathological condition of hatred. "Recruiting be damned," says the patriotic philosopher, "odium nunquam potest esse bonum."[76] The method of distortion is also abundantly used by journalists of both parties. German hatred of England has often been stoked up by isolated mistranslations of sentences from The Times, and English and French journalists have not been slow in following the German example. It is said that after the fall of Antwerp the Koelnische Zeitung announced that "as soon as the fall of Antwerp was known the church bells in Germany were rung," a harmless message which was successively distorted by the Matin, the Daily Mail, and the Corriere della Sera, until it finally reappeared in the Matin in the following form: "According to the information of the Corriere della Sera from London and Cologne it is confirmed that the barbaric conquerors of Antwerp punished the unfortunate Belgian priests for their heroic refusal to ring the church bells by hanging them as living clappers to the bells with their heads downwards."[77]

The Manufacture of Hatred is unfortunately become a part of the Nationalist Movement in nearly all modern European States. The spurious Nationalism which is the result not of race but of education, depends for its existence almost entirely on so-called ethnological propaganda and continues to thrive by the cultivation of two propositions, neither of which is true: that all the members of one national group are racially different from all the members of the neighbouring group; and that this racial difference naturally and necessarily and properly implies the mutual hatred of the two nations. They proclaim, in fact, that certain nations are the "natural enemies " of certain others, by hating which they are only fulfilling the national function of self-realisation. By such arguments, which have no genuine ethnological foundation, the false prophets of nationalism are filling Europe with the racial prejudice of artificial Kelts, artificial Poles, and artificial Teutons. Of course race hatred between Slav and Teuton is no more "natural" than family hatred between Jones and Robinson; and even if it were, even that is if the cultures of two neighbouring races were mutually exclusive, it could still be argued—as it must in any case be argued—that no nation is racially pure. The last "Pole" I met proudly professed that the hatred of Russia was in his blood. Yet he was born in Bessarabia, and it was therefore not surprising that his facial type was distinctly Roumanian; he came, that is, if race means anything at all, of a Græco-Latin stock, and his hatred of Russia, which seemed to be the beginning and the end of his programme of "Polish nationalism," was the result of a few years of neglected education. Half the conflicting "Nationalisms" of Europe are programmes of artificial hatred, the propagandists of which may actually be of the same blood as their opponents; a single generation suffices for the manufacture of the racial enthusiast, which is often completed by a modification of the family name. Even Greeks and Bulgars are frequently of common descent. When a Macedonian village changes hands the Greek Karagiozes has been known to develop into the Bulgarian Karagiozoff; and a Mazarakis will boast a racial incompatibility with his second cousin Madjarieff. The same process for the manufacture of nationalism may be detected at the other end of Europe: at Mons of glorious memory there was a Walloon with the good old Walloon name of Le Grand, whose grandfather had been an equally enthusiastic Fleming with the good old Flemish name of De Groodt.

True nationalism may indeed be differentiated by the absence of this artificial element of ethnological hatred. True nationalism is simply the feeling for the small independent community, a movement for the autonomy of the local group. No true manifestation of the nationalist movement in Europe is ever opposed to other nationalisms; but all alike are involved in a desperate political conflict with their common enemy Imperialism.

§ 5

Imperialism the Enemy

Imperialism, on the other hand, is the feeling for large dominions and is very often only an unreasoning lust for the possession of territory:[78] surviving perhaps from the time when the land of the community was regarded as the reserved hunting-ground of the tribal chief, or at least as the private estate of the national monarch. But in so far as this passionate desire for extending the superficial territory under the central government is a reasoning desire, in so far that is as attempts have been made to justify by retrospective theories the almost instinctive achievements of painting the map red, it is fairly clear (although the issues have been confused by altruistic and Kiplingesque but not by any means unfounded views about the White Man's Burden) that Imperialism is based on the insatiable claims of over-productive commerce. Commerce at any rate is the ex post facto excuse for the foundation of the British Empire, and if it can no longer be pleaded as a reason for the maintenance of the British Empire, it is simply because the British Empire is no longer an empire, but for the most part a federation of autonomous states.[79] But Imperialism has only been scotched by the unconscious wisdom of English political development. It still unhappily survives not only in the intermittent demand for the acquisition of fresh colonial territory, but also, in its crudest form, without even the shadow of an excuse commercial or altruistic, in the continued subjection of Ireland to English rule. We must not be surprised if the imperialistic elements of the State receive after the war a new lease of life from the mutual encouragement of commerce and militarism.

The commercial classes of course support Imperialism because, with an obtuseness permitted only to our "business men," they believe that the acquisition of more colonies still means the discovery of new markets.[80] They have not yet realised that nowadays all markets are practically open markets, and that no tariff can effectively exclude goods for which there is any demand, for the simple reason that an effective demand cheerfully pays an increased price. All nations in fact stand to share fairly the commercial advantage of each other's colonial markets: and it might even be shown by a little simple book-keeping that the particular balance any nation gains from trading with a colony of its own must be debited with the expense of governing that colony. In short, the commercial excuse for Imperialism is actually obsolete. Yet commerce continues to support Imperialism, and although the original reason for this support is no longer valid, it is still, unconsciously perhaps but very methodically, serving its own interests by this support, in so far as Imperialism involves militarism (or "navalism") and so leads to the probability of war. But even if the commercial reasons which constitute the only possible excuse for Imperialism were still valid, it would still remain equally valid and much more important that Imperialism is bad in itself, the enemy of liberty and the begetter of arrogance.

Imperialism is bad on general grounds because it implies a centralisation of authority which violates the natural rights of nationalities. A nationality, as has already been suggested, means not necessarily a pure racial enclave, but simply a small local group, in the formation of which similarity of "race," religion, and culture will not be ignored but will naturally be considered as modifications of primarily geographical boundaries. The right of nationalities to local autonomy, to deal again only with the simplest general reason, is based on the idea of democracy, the exercise of a political voice being regarded as a natural and inalienable right of the free citizen. Democracy means representative government, and representative government simply does not work in a large and mixed community of more than twenty millions.[81] Hence the right of nationalities to local autonomy is fundamental, and is inconsistent with Imperialism as such.

Imperialism is bad because it is based on conquest, implies a "subject race," and sooner or later will have to be maintained by war. It breeds a conquering and commercial spirit, which is never satisfied unless it is carrying some one else's burden (at a high freight). The imperialist plutocracy will then find itself so much occupied with other people's affairs that it will be neglecting domestic politics altogether: and this neglect will be the more disastrous in so far as poverty and servitude will have increased at the same rate as luxury. The citizens of an Imperialist state will be unable to control their commercial masters, and, as Rousseau said of the English, will soon find themselves a nation of slaves[82]: and that not only because a policy of conquest is incompatible with democracy; but also because the lust of conquest and the arrogance of

militarism acquire strength with each fresh licence until the community as a whole is quite unable to control its own baser passions—a condition which more than any other merits the name of servitude.[83] Imperialism is a form of political corruption in which a nation is consoled for its own slavery by the pride of enslaving its neighbours. The attainment of permanent peace connotes the abandonment of Imperialism.