Chapter 5

Looking back at the history of the whole affair, one seems to see, as I have said, a kind of fatality about it. The great power and vigour of the German peoples, shown by their early history in Europe, had been broken up by the religious and other dissensions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It fell to Prussia to become the centre of organization for a new Germany. The rich human and social material of the German States--their literary, artistic, and scientific culture, their philosophy, their learning--clustered curiously enough round the hard and military nucleus of the North. It was perhaps their instinct and, for the time, their salvation to do so. The new Germany, hemmed in on all sides by foreign Powers, could only see her way to reasonable expansion and recognition, and a field for her latent activities, by the use of force, military force. A long succession of political philosophers drilled this into her. She embarked in small wars and always with success. She became a political unity and a Great Power in Europe. And then came her commercial triumph. Riches beyond all expectation flowed in; and a mercantile class arose in her midst whose ideals of life were of a corresponding character--the ideals of the wealthy shopkeeper. What wonder that, feeling her power, feeling herself more than ever baulked of her rights, she cast her eyes abroad, and coveted the imperial and commercial supremacy of the world?

In this she had the example of Britain before her. Britain had laid land to land and market to market over the globe, and showed no particular scruple in the matter. Why should not Germany do the same? It was true that Britain always carried the Bible with her--but this was mere British cant. Britain carried the Bible in her left hand, but in her right a sword; and when she used the latter she always let the former drop. Germany could do likewise--but without that odious pretence of morality, and those crocodile tears over the unfortunates whom she devoured. It was only a question of Might and Organization and Armament.

So far Germany seems to have had a perfectly good case; and though we in England might not like her ambitions, we could not reasonably find fault with motives so perfectly similar to our own. We might, indeed, make a grievance of the frank brutality displayed in her methods and the defence of them; but then, she might with equal right object to our everlasting pretence of "morality," and our concealment of mercenary and imperial aims under the cloak of virtue and innocence. One really must confess that it is difficult to say which is the worse.

But if the crystallization of Germany round the Prussian nucleus was for the time the source of Germany's success, it is a question whether it is not even now becoming something quite different, and the likely cause of a serious downfall. It would seem hardly probable that the amalgamation between elements so utterly dissimilar can permanently endure. The kindly, studious, sociable, rather naïvely innocent German mass-people dragged by the scruff of the neck into the arena of militarism and world-politics, may for a time have had their heads turned by the exalted position in which they found themselves; but it is not likely that they will continue for long to enjoy the situation. With no great instinct for politics, nor any marked gift of tact and discernment, unsuccessful as a rule as colonists,[17] and with no understanding of how to govern--except on the Prussian lines, which are every day becoming more obsolete and less adapted to the modern world--the rôle which their empire-building philosophers set out for them is one which they are eminently unfitted to fulfil. It is sad, but we cannot blame them for the defect. They blame the world in general for siding against them in this affair, but do not see that in most cases it has been their own want of perception which has left them on the wrong side of the hedge.

Bismarck, with his "Blood and Iron" policy, made a huge blunder in not perceiving that in the modern world spiritual forces are arising which must for ever discredit the same. He emphasized the blunder by wresting Alsace-Lorraine from France, and again by crippling Russia in the treaty of 1878--thus making enemies where generosity might have brought him friends. The German Executive in July of last year (1914) showed extraordinary want of tact in not seeing that Russia, rebuffed in 1908 over Bosnia and Herzegovina, would never put up with a _second_ insult of the same kind over Servia. The same Government was strangely unable to perceive that whatever it might tactically gain by the invasion and devastation of Belgium would be more than lost by the moral effect of such action on the whole world; and notwithstanding its army of spies, it had not the sense to see that England, whether morally bound to or not, was certain, at all costs, to fight in defence of Belgium's neutrality. So true it is that without the understanding which comes from the heart, all the paraphernalia of science and learning and the material results of organization and discipline are of little good.

But however we choose to apportion the blame or at least the responsibility for the situation among the various Governments concerned, the main point and the main lesson of it all is to see that any such apportionment does not much matter! As long as our Governments are constructed as they are--that is, on the principle of representing, not the real masses of their respective peoples, but the interests of certain classes, especially the commercial, financial, and military classes--so long will such wars be inevitable. The real blame rests, not with the particular Foreign policy of this or that country but with the fact that Europe, already rising through her mass-peoples into a far finer and more human and spiritual life than of old, still lies bound in the chains of an almost Feudal social order.

When the great German mass-peoples find this out, when they discover the little rift in the lute which now separates their real quality from the false standards of their own dominant military and commercial folk, then their true rôle in the world will begin, and a glorious rôle it will be.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] "A German," he said, "could not live long in the atmosphere of England--an atmosphere of sham, prudery, conventionality, and hollowness"! See article on "Treitschke," by W.H. Dawson, in the _Nineteenth Century_ for January 1915.

[14] The influence, however, of Bernhardi in his own country has been somewhat exaggerated in England.

[15] It seems that the same remark is made about the Germans in the U.S.A., that they take little interest in politics there.

[16] This attitude is exactly corroborated by Herr Maximilian Harden's manifesto, originally published in _Die Zukunft,_ and lately reprinted in the _New York Times_.

[17] Though this is only, perhaps, true of their State colonies. In their individual and missionary colonizing groups, and as pioneer settlers, they seem to have succeeded well.

VI

THE HEALING OF, NATIONS[18]

It is quite possible that the little rift within the lute, alluded to in the concluding paragraph of last chapter, may widen so far as to cause before long great internal changes and reconstructions in Germany herself; but short of that happening, it would seem that there is no alternative for the Allies but to continue the war until her Militarism can be put out of court, and that for long years to come. There is no alternative, because she has revealed her hand too clearly as a menace--if she should prevail--of barbarous force to the whole world. It is this menace which has roused practically the whole world against her. And there is this amount of good in the situation, namely, that while with the victory of Germany a German "terror" might be established through the world, with the victory of the Allies neither England, nor France, nor Russia, nor little Belgium, nor any other country, could claim a final credit and supremacy. With the latter victory we shall be freed from the nightmare claim of any one nation's world-empire.

But in order to substantiate this result England must also abdicate her claim. She must abdicate her mere crass insistence on commercial supremacy. The "Nation of Shopkeepers" theory, which has in the past made her the hated of other nations, which has created within her borders a vulgar and unpleasant class--the repository of much arrogant wealth--must cease to be the standard of her life. I have before me at this moment a manifesto of "The British Empire League," patronized by royalty and the dukes, and of which Lord Rothschild is treasurer. The constitution of the League was framed in 1895; and I note with regret that positively the five "principal objects of the League" mentioned therein have solely to do with the extension and facilitation of Britain's trade, and the "co-operation of the military and naval forces of the Empire with a special view to the due protection of the trade routes." Not a word is said _in the whole manifesto_ about the human and social responsibilities of this vast Empire; not a word about the guardianship and nurture of native races, their guidance and assistance among the pitfalls of civilization; not a word about the principles of honour and just dealing with regard to our civilized neighbour-nations in Europe and elsewhere; not a word about the political freedom and welfare of all classes at home. One rubs one's eyes, and looks at the document again; but it is so. Its one inspiration is--Trade. Seeing that, I confess to a sinking of the heart. Can we blame Germany for struggling at all costs to enlarge her borders, when _that_ is what the British Empire means?

Until we rise, as a nation, to a conception of what we mean by our national life, finer and grander than a mere counting of trade-returns, what can we expect save failure and ill-success?

Possibly in the conviction that she is fighting for a worthy object (the ending of militarism), and in the determination (if sincerely carried out) of once more playing her part in the world as the protector of small nations, Britain may find her salvation, and a cause which will save her soul. It is certainly encouraging to find that there is a growing feeling in favour of the recognition and rehabilitation of the small peoples of the world. If it is true that Britain by her grasping Imperial Commercialism in the past (and let us hope that period _is_ past) has roused jealousy and hatred among the other nations, equally is it true that Germany to-day, by her dreams of world-conquest, has been rousing hatred and fear. But the day has gone by of world-empires founded on the lust of conquest, whether that conquest be military or commercial. The modern peoples surely are growing out of dreams so childish as that. The world-empire of Goethe and Beethoven is even now far more extensive, far more powerful, than that which Wilhelm II and his Junkers are seeking to encompass. There is something common, unworthy, in the effort of domination; and while the Great Powers have thus vulgarized themselves, it is the little countries who have gone forward in the path of progress. "In modern Europe what do we not owe to little Switzerland, lighting the torch of freedom six hundred years ago, and keeping it alight through all the centuries when despotic monarchies held the rest of the European Continent? And what to free Holland, with her great men of learning and her painters surpassing those of all other countries save Italy? So the small Scandinavian nations have given to the world famous men of science, from Linnaeus downwards, poets like Tegner and Björnson, scholars like Madvig, dauntless explorers like Fridthiof Nansen. England had, in the age of Shakespeare, Bacon, and Milton, a population little larger than that of Bulgaria to-day. The United States, in the days of Washington and Franklin and Jefferson and Hamilton and Marshall, counted fewer inhabitants than Denmark or Greece."[19]

In all their internal politics and social advancement, Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, Finland (until the paw of the Bear was on her) and Belgium (till the claw of the Spread-Eagle) have been well to the fore. It is they who have carried on the banner of idealism which Germany herself uplifted when she was a small people or a group of small peoples. It is they who have really had prosperous, healthy, independent, and alert populations. How much more interesting, we may say, would Europe be under the variety of such a regime than under the monotonous bureaucracy and officialism of any Great Power! And to some such scheme we must adhere. It would mean, of course, the alliance of all the States of Western Europe, large and small (and including both a remodelled Germany and a largely remodelled Austria) in one great Federation--whose purpose would be partly to unite and preserve Europe against any common foe, from the East or elsewhere, and partly to regulate any overweening ambition of a member of the Federation, such as might easily become a menace to the other members. A secondary but most important result of the formation of such a United States of Europe would be that while each State would probably preserve a small military establishment of its own, the enormous and fatal incubus of the present armaments system would be rendered unnecessary, and so at last the threat of national bankruptcy and ruin, which has of late pursued the nations Like an evil dream, might pass away. But in that matter of finance it cannot be disguised that a terrible period still awaits the European peoples. Already the moneylenders sitting on their chests form a veritable nightmare; but with fresh debts by the thousand million sterling being contracted, there is great danger that the mass-peoples beneath will be worse paralysed and broken even than they are now--unless, indeed, with a great effort they rouse themselves and throw off the evil burden.

That the world is waking up to a recognition of _racial_ rights--that is, the right of each race to have as far as possible its own Government, instead of being lorded over by an alien race--is a good sign; and a European settlement along that line must be pressed for. At last, after centuries of discomfort, we at home are finding our solution of the Irish question in this very obvious way; and it may be that Europe, tired of war, may finally have the sense to adopt the same principle. Of course, there are cases where populations are so mixed, as, for instance, the Czechs and Slovaks and Germans in Bohemia and Moravia, or where small colonies of one race are so embedded in the midst of another race, as are the Germans among the Roumanians of Transylvania, that this solution may be difficult. That is no reason, however, why the general principle should not be applied. It _must_, indeed, be applied if Europe is not to return to barbarism.

And it interests us--having regard to what I have said about _class_ rule being so fruitful a cause of war--to remember that the rule of one race by another always does mean class rule. The alien conquerors who descend upon a country become the military and landlord caste there. Thus the Norman barons in England, the English squires in Ireland, the Magyars in Hungary, the German barons in East Prussia and the Baltic provinces, and so forth. They make their profit and maintain themselves out of the labour and the taxation of the subject peoples.

In the earlier forms of social life, when men lived in tribes, a rude equality and democracy prevailed; there was nothing that could well be called class-government; there was simply custom and the leadership of the elders of the tribe. Then with the oncoming of what we call civilization, and the growth of the sense of property, differences arose--accumulations of wealth and power by individuals, enslavements of tribes by other tribes; and classes sprang up, and class-government, and so the material of endless suffering and oppression and hatred and warfare. I have already explained (in the Introduction) that Class in itself as the mere formation within a nation of groups of similar occupation and activity--working harmoniously with each other and with the nation--is a perfectly natural and healthy phenomenon; it is only when it means groups pursuing their own interests counter to each other and to the nation that it becomes diseased. There will come a time when the class-element in this latter sense will be ejected from society, and society will return again to its democratic form and structure. There will be no want, in that time, of variety of occupation and talent, or of differentiation in the social organism; quite the contrary; but simply there will be no predatory or parasitical groups within such organism, whose, interests will run counter to the whole, and which will act (as such classes act now) as foci and seedbeds of disease and strife within the whole. With a return to the recognition of racial rights and autonomies over the world, it is clear that one great cause of strife will be removed, and we shall be one step nearer to the ending of the preposterous absurdity of war.

And talking about the difficulty of sorting out mixed populations, or of dealing with small colonies of one race embedded in the midst of another race, it is evident that once you get rid of autocratic or military or class-government of any kind, and return to democratic forms, this difficulty will be much reduced or disappear. Small democratic communes are perfectly simple to form in groups of any magnitude or minuteness which may be desirable; and such groups would easily federate or ally themselves with surrounding democracies of alien race, whereas if lorded over by alien conquerors they would be in a state of chronic rebellion. Of such democratic alliance and federation of peoples of totally different race, Switzerland supplies a well-recognized and far-acclaimed example.

* * * * *

That in the future there will be an outcry in favour of Conscription made by certain parties in Britain goes without saying; but that must be persistently opposed. The nation says it is fighting to put down Militarism. Why, then, make compulsory militarism foundational in our national life? To abolish militarism _by_ militarism is like "putting down Drink" by swallowing it! The whole lesson of this war is against conscription. Germany could never have "imposed herself" on Europe without it. And yet her soldiers, brave as they naturally are, and skilfully as they have fought, have not done themselves justice. How could they under such conditions--forced into battle by their officers, flung in heaps on the enemy's guns? The voluntary response in Britain to the call to arms has been inspiriting; and if voluntaryism means momentary delay in a crisis, still it means success in the end. No troops have fought more finely than the British. Said Surgeon-General Evatt, speaking in London in October--and General Evatt's word in such a matter ought to carry weight: "After long experience in studying Russian, German, Bavarian, Saxon, French, Spanish, and American fighting units, my verdict is unhesitatingly in favour of the British.... What has occurred lately has been a splendid triumph of citizenship, because people were allowed their proper liberty and the consciousness of freely, sharing in a great Empire."

Besides it must always be remembered that conscription gives a Government power to initiate an iniquitous war, whereas voluntaryism keeps the national life clean and healthy. A free people will not fight for the trumped-up schemes and selfish machinations of a class--not, indeed, unless they are grossly deceived by, Press and Class plots. Anyhow, to force men to fight in causes which they do not approve, to compel them to adopt a military career when their temperaments are utterly unsuited to such a thing, or when their consciences or their religion forbid them--these things are both foolish and wicked.

If the nation wants soldiers it must pay for them. England, for example, is rolling in wealth; and it is simply a scandal that the wealthy classes should sit at home in comfort and security and pay to the man in the trenches--who is risking his life at every moment, and often living in such exhaustion and misery as actually to wish for the bullet which will _end_ his life--no more than the minimum wage of an ordinary day-labourer; and that they should begrudge every penny paid to his dependents--whether he be living or dead--or to himself when he returns, a lifelong cripple, to his home. To starve and stint your own soldiers, to discourage recruiting, and then to make the consequent failure of men to come forward into an excuse for conscription is the meanest of policies. As a matter of fact, the circumstances of the present war show that with anything like decent reward for their services there is an abundant, an almost over-abundant, supply of men ready to flock to the standard of their country in a time of necessity. Nor must it be forgotten, in this matter of pay, that the general type and average of our forces to-day, whether naval or military, is far higher than it was fifty, years ago. The men are just as plucky, and more educated, more alert, more competent in every way. To keep them up to this high standard of efficiency they need a high standard of care and consideration.

It may, however, be said--in view of our present industrial conditions, and the low standard of physical health and vitality prevailing among the young folk of our large towns--that physical drill and scout training, including ambulance and other work, and qualification in _some_ useful trade, might very well be made a part of our general educational system, for rich and poor alike, say, between the ages of sixteen and eighteen. Such a training would to each individual boy be immensely valuable, and by providing some rudimentary understanding of military, affairs and the duties of public service and citizenship, would enable him to choose _how_ he could be helpful to the nation--provided always he were not forced to make his choice in a direction distasteful or repugnant to him. In any good cause, as in a war of _defence_ against a foreign enemy, it is obvious enough, as I have said, that there would be plenty of native enthusiasm forthcoming without legal or official pressure. However, I have enlarged a little on the subject of Conscription in a later chapter, and will say no more here.

But the burning and pressing question is: Why should we--we, the "enlightened and civilized" nations of Europe--get involved in these senseless wars at all? And surely _this_ war will, of all wars, force an answer to the question. Here, for the last twenty years, have these so-called Great Powers been standing round, all professing that their one desire is peace, and all meanwhile arming to the teeth; each accusing the others of militant intentions, and all lamenting that "war is inevitable." Here they have been forming their _Ententes_ and Alliances, carrying on their diplomatic cabals and intrigues, studying the map and adjusting the Balance of Power--all, of course, with the best intentions--and lo! with the present result! What nonsense! What humbug! What an utter bankruptcy of so-called diplomacy! When will the peoples themselves arise and put a stop to this fooling--the people who give their lives and pay the cost of it all? If the present-day, diplomats and Foreign Ministers have sincerely striven for peace, then their utter incapacity and futility have been proved to the hilt, and they must be swept away. If they have not sincerely striven for peace, but only pretended to so strive, then also they must be swept away, for deceit in such a matter is unpardonable.