Part 7

Our eloquent friends of the Paris dinner-party seem to have been strongly impressed with the excellence of enormous political aggregates. We, too, approaching the subject from a different point of view, have been led to see how desirable it is that self-governing groups of men should be enabled to work together in permanent harmony and on a great scale. In this kind of political integration the work of civilization very largely consists. We have seen how in its most primitive form political society is made up of small self-governing groups that are perpetually at war with one another. Now the process of change which we call civilization means quite a number of things. But there is no doubt that on its political side it means primarily the gradual substitution of a state of peace for a state of war. This change is the condition precedent for all the other kinds of improvement that are connoted by such a term as "civilization." Manifestly the development of industry is largely dependent upon the cessation or restriction of warfare; and furthermore, as the industrial phase of civilization slowly supplants the military phase, men's characters undergo, though very slowly, a corresponding change. Men become less inclined to destroy life or to inflict pain; or--to use the popular terminology which happens here to coincide precisely with that of the Doctrine of Evolution--they become less _brutal_ and more _humane_. Obviously then the prime feature of the process called civilization is the general diminution of warfare. But we have seen that a general diminution of warfare is rendered possible only by the union of small political groups into larger groups that are kept together by community of interests, and that can adjust their mutual relations by legal discussion without coming to blows. In the preceding lecture we considered this process of political integration as variously exemplified by communities of Hellenic, of Roman, and of Teutonic race, and we saw how manifold were the difficulties which the process had to encounter. We saw how the Teutons--at least in Switzerland, England, and America--had succeeded best through the retention of local self-government combined with central representation. We saw how the Romans failed of ultimate success because by weakening self-government they weakened that community of interest which is essential to the permanence of a great political aggregate. We saw how the Greeks, after passing through their most glorious period in a state of chronic warfare, had begun to achieve considerable success in forming a pacific federation when their independent career was suddenly cut short by the Roman conqueror.

This last example introduces us to a fresh consideration, of very great importance. It is not only that every progressive community has had to solve, in one way or another, the problem of securing permanent concert of action without sacrificing local independence of action; but while engaged in this difficult work the community has had to defend itself against the attacks of other communities. In the case just cited, of the conquest of Greece by Rome, little harm was done perhaps. But under different circumstances immense damage may have been done in this way, and the nearer we go to the beginnings of civilization the greater the danger. At the dawn of history we see a few brilliant points of civilization surrounded on every side by a midnight blackness of barbarism. In order that the pacific community may be able to go on doing its work, it must be strong enough and warlike enough to overcome its barbaric neighbours who have no notion whatever of keeping peace. This is another of the seeming paradoxes of the history of civilization, that for a very long time the possibility of peace can be guaranteed only through war. Obviously the permanent peace of the world can be secured only through the gradual concentration of the preponderant military strength into the hands of the most pacific communities. With infinite toil and trouble this point has been slowly gained by mankind, through the circumstance that the very same political aggregation of small primitive communities which makes them less disposed to quarrel among themselves tends also to make them more than a match for the less coherent groups of their more barbarous neighbours. The same concert of action which tends towards internal harmony tends also towards external victory, and both ends are promoted by the co-operation of the same sets of causes. But for a long time all the political problems of the civilized world were complicated by the fact that the community had to fight for its life. We seldom stop to reflect upon the imminent danger from outside attacks, whether from surrounding barbarism or from neighbouring civilizations of lower type, amid which the rich and high-toned civilizations of Greece and Rome were developed. When the king of Persia undertook to reduce Greece to the condition of a Persian satrapy, there was imminent danger that all the enormous fruition of Greek thought in the intellectual life of the European world might have been nipped in the bud. And who can tell how often, in prehistoric times, some little gleam of civilization, less bright and steady than this one had become, may have been quenched in slavery or massacre? The greatest work which the Romans performed in the world was to assume the aggressive against menacing barbarism, to subdue it, to tame it, and to enlist its brute force on the side of law and order. This was a murderous work, and in doing it the Romans became excessively cruel, but it had to be done by some one before you could expect to have great and peaceful civilizations like our own. The warfare of Rome is by no means adequately explained by the theory of a deliberate immoral policy of aggression,--"infernal," I believe, is the stronger adjective which Dr. Draper uses. The aggressive wars of Rome were largely dictated by just such considerations as those which a century ago made it necessary for the English to put down the raids of the Scotch Highlanders, and which have since made it necessary for Russia to subdue the Caucasus. It is not easy for a turbulent community to live next to an orderly one without continually stirring up frontier disturbances which call for stern repression from the orderly community. Such considerations go far towards explaining the military history of the Romans, and it is a history with which, on the whole, we ought to sympathize. In its European relations that history is the history of the moving of the civilized frontier northward and eastward against the disastrous encroachments of barbarous peoples. This great movement has, on the whole, been steadily kept up, in spite of some apparent fluctuation in the fifth and sixth centuries of the Christian era, and it is still going on to-day. It was a great gain for civilization when the Romans overcame the Keltiberians of Spain, and taught them good manners and the Latin language, and made it for their interest hereafter to fight against barbarians. The third European peninsula was thus won over to the side of law and order. Danger now remained on the north. The Gauls had once sacked the city of Rome; hordes of Teutons had lately menaced the very heart of civilization, but had been overthrown in murderous combat by Caius Marius; another great Teutonic movement, led by Ariovistus, now threatened to precipitate the whole barbaric force of south-eastern Gaul upon the civilized world; and so it occurred to the prescient genius of Caesar to be beforehand and conquer Gaul, and enlist all its giant barbaric force on the side of civilization. This great work was as thoroughly done as anything that was ever done in human history, and we ought to be thankful to Caesar for it every day that we live. The frontier to be defended against barbarism was now moved away up to the Rhine, and was very much shortened; but above all, the Gauls were made to feel themselves to be Romans. Their country became one of the chief strongholds of civilization and of Christianity; and when the frightful shock of barbarism came--the most formidable blow that has ever been directed by barbaric brute force against European civilization--it was in Gaul that it was repelled and that its force was spent. At the beginning of the fifth century an enormous horde of yellow Mongolians, known as Huns, poured down into Europe with avowed intent to burn and destroy all the good work which Rome had wrought in the world; and terrible was the havoc they effected in the course of fifty years. If Attila had carried his point, it has been thought that the work of European civilization might have had to be begun over again. But near Chálons-on-the-Marne, in the year 451, in one of the most obstinate struggles of which history preserves the record, the career of the "Scourge of God" was arrested, and mainly by the prowess of Gauls and of Visigoths whom the genius of Rome had tamed. That was the last day on which barbarism was able to contend with civilization on equal terms. It was no doubt a critical day for all future history; and for its favourable issue we must largely thank the policy adopted by Caesar five centuries before. By the end of the eighth century the great power of the Franks had become enlisted in behalf of law and order, and the Roman throne was occupied by a Frank,--the ablest man who had appeared in the world since Caesar's death; and one of the worthiest achievements of Charles the Great was the conquest and conversion of pagan Germany, which threw the frontier against barbarism eastward as far as the Oder, and made it so much the easier to defend Europe. In the thirteenth century this frontier was permanently carried forward to the Vistula by the Teutonic Knights who, under commission from the emperor Frederick II., overcame the heathen Prussians and Lithuanians; and now it began to be shown how greatly the military strength of Europe had increased. In this same century Batu, the grandson of Jinghis Khan, came down into Europe with a horde of more than a million Mongols, and tried to repeat the experiment of Attila. Batu penetrated as far as Silesia, and won a great battle at Liegnitz in 1241, but in spite of his victory he had to desist from the task of conquering Europe. Since the fifth century the physical power of the civilized world had grown immensely; and the impetus of this barbaric invasion was mainly spent upon Russia, the growth of which it succeeded in retarding for more than two centuries. Finally since the sixteenth century we have seen the Russians, redeemed from their Mongolian oppressors, and rich in many of the elements of a vigorous national life,--we have seen the Russians resume the aggressive in this conflict of ages, beginning to do for Central Asia in some sort what the Romans did for Europe. The frontier against barbarism, which Cæsar left at the Rhine, has been carried eastward to the Volga, and is now advancing even to the Oxus. The question has sometimes been raised whether it would be possible for European civilization to be seriously threatened by any future invasion of barbarism or of some lower type of civilization. By barbarism certainly not: all the nomad strength of Mongolian Asia would throw itself in vain against the insuperable barrier constituted by Russia. But I have heard it quite seriously suggested that if some future Attila or Jinghis were to wield as a unit the entire military strength of the four hundred millions of Chinese, possessed with some suddenly-conceived idea of conquering the world, even as Omar and Abderrahman wielded as a unit the newly-welded power of the Saracens in the seventh and eighth centuries, then perhaps a staggering blow might yet be dealt against European civilization. I will not waste precious time in considering this imaginary case, further than to remark that if the Chinese are ever going to try anything of this sort, they cannot afford to wait very long; for within another century, as we shall presently see, their very numbers will be surpassed by those of the English race alone. By that time all the elements of military predominance on the earth, including that of simple numerical superiority, will have been gathered into the hands not merely of men of European descent in general, but more specifically into the hands of the offspring of the Teutonic tribes who conquered Britain in the fifth century. So far as the relations of civilization with barbarism are concerned to-day, the only serious question is by what process of modification the barbarous races are to maintain their foothold upon the earth at all. While once such people threatened the very continuance of civilization, they now exist only on sufferance.