Part 7

His attitude towards efficiency was also the direct opposite of the present German conception of it. To him efficiency was a matter of adaptation and improvisation, while the German theory is that it is a question of fixed method and elaborate mechanism. Nobody ever despised more than Carlyle the perennial fallacy that things can be done better by the hocus pocus of procedure than by the intelligent application of the available means to the end desired. He censured any effort to achieve things automatically. He was never tired of ridiculing trust in formulas. He insisted that the intelligence must be unfettered by preconceptions or by a rigid plan. His hero was a man who had "swallowed all the formulas," and who proceeded to adapt means to ends in any way that was effective, passing rough-shod over theory, convention, dogmas, or any other restrictions on his freedom of action. It is true that he did insist on the necessity of having accurate and comprehensive knowledge, and on thoroughness and other essentials of what the Germans regard as scientific procedure. These things, however, were to him not major but minor virtues. They were the auxiliaries to success, but they were never to be considered as sufficient to ensure success, for they had always to be supplemented by intelligence and insight. This is shown by his depreciation of mere "beaver" industry, and by his fondness for satirizing "pipe-clay," by which he meant senseless military routine. No crime, in his eyes, was worse than a failure to recognize the dominant importance of the sensibly and intellectually imponderable and intangible elements that are part of every human problem; so that he reprehended as vices the very things that have been most characteristic of the Germans during the present war.

Another thing that Carlyle abused and the Germans display, is insincerity. Nothing comes in for more invective from him than this, and to him it meant primarily a subjective attitude. Vanity was its chief cause, in his opinion. Truth, however unpalatable, must be recognized; while fiction, however flattering, must be scorned. Personal relationships must not sway our judgment, and he railed with especial violence against unwarranted optimism inspired by conceit. He pointed out, as one of Frederick the Great's chief virtues, the fact that he was influenced by no delusions created by vanity or sentimentality. He says Frederick looked facts squarely in the face, and instances his once offending his brother, the Crown Prince, by telling him that he had surrounded himself with flatterers, and reminding him that the Austrians, his enemies in the field, would not flatter him. Carlyle also points out that Frederick's wars were all conducted on a frank basis, so far, at least, as acknowledgment to himself of the real situation was concerned. There was no indulgence in the theatrical or the spectacular, certainly in none that deceived only himself. Frederick wasted no energy in striving for apparent triumphs that had no practical worth. He disregarded purely political or sentimental influences. Berlin was twice entered by the enemy during the Seven Years War, because Frederick never paid a military price for a political or a temporary victory, but he yielded territory whenever strategy demanded it. How different is this from Germany's present military policy, which sacrifices permanent advantages for the appearance of victory, and does not succeed in achieving even a convincing appearance of that? It is plain that the cheap posturing of the German military policy is just the sort of thing Carlyle hated and despised, and nobody who has read him more than casually can have escaped realizing that his insistence on the necessity of recognizing fact in an honest and unbiased manner is a condemnation of the delight in conscious and unconscious mendacity displayed by the present German government.

Stupidity he warned against as one of the chief implements of the devil. There is no other crime, he often said, for morality is largely a matter of intelligence. Better be a villain than a fool, he implies, by quoting approvingly the boast of the Scotch family that it had produced "many a blackguard but not one blockhead." The mind which cannot or will not perceive the obvious, or which persists in denying the unflattering, is not only hopeless but vicious. Preferring to credit their prejudices or their desires, instead of the lesson of events, was the chief crime he ascribed to the men he held responsible for the worst catastrophes of history. For mere density and well-intentioned incompetence, as in the case of Louis XVI, he had some pity; but for stupidity arising from wanton obstinacy and arrogance he had nothing but wrath and scorn. It would be difficult to find in history a parallel for the infatuated folly of the German military and political policy during this war, but we find Carlyle reprehending less aggravated and perverse displays of trust in bombast, brutality, and pretension, in the case of countries like Spain and Austria; and this is only one of many things that show how monstrous in his eyes would seem the insensate policy which has made Germany the shame of civilization, and has alienated from her every country in the world except a few contiguous ones that tolerate or assist her through fear or rapacity.

What proves the German policy most at variance with Carlyle's philosophy, however, is the fact that it is guided by materialistic and cynical convictions. His basic belief was that the fundamental law of existence is morality; they jeer at any power that is not material. Besides this, he believed that reliance on the baser qualities of human nature can never lead anywhere but to perdition. The leadership which aims to secure itself by appealing to the selfishness or by satisfying the folly of mankind, is courting disaster. The German policy boastfully proceeds on the assumption that the only motives that govern human action are self interest of some base sort, and it credits humanity with as little intelligence as morality. It is true that Carlyle had slight respect for the intelligence or the integrity of the masses, but he insisted that nobility is inherent in human nature, and that a hero who knows how to arouse it, invariably appears whenever a government becomes so unjust or so incompetent as to be intolerable. The German theory is that the weak have no friends; Carlyle's conviction was that nature avenges all injustice. The Germans declare that might makes right; Carlyle preached that right makes might, and on every question of fundamental morality he was diametrically opposed to them. "Savage animalism is nothing; inventive spiritualism is all," he writes in one place, and implies in a thousand. The Germans proceed on exactly the opposite assumption. They trust in nothing but force, and the neo-Darwinism that guides their policy is only a combination of the ideas he denounced in the works of such men as Hume, Bentham, Comte, and Darwin himself, mixed with a sentimental egoism that he abominated above everything else.

IV

There is, of course, some reason for believing that Carlyle's ideas resemble those of which the German policy is the expression, but there is none if we look beyond his superficial meaning. One reason for branding him as an advocate of German practices is his exaltation of Frederick the Great. Frederick began his first war by seizing Silesia, very much as Wilhelm II began the present war by seizing Belgium. As Carlyle justified the seizing of Silesia, many people cannot see why that does not warrant the conclusion that he would also justify the seizure of Belgium. Such people, however, forget that the Prussia of 1740 was not even the Prussia of 1914, to say nothing of the German Empire or the Teutonic Alliance. Carlyle would detect in Prussia a change in spirit, but even if this cannot be established, there is certainly no parallel between Frederick's seizure of Silesia and Germany's attack on Belgium. In 1740, Prussia was one of the small countries of Europe. Its population was about half that of Belgium in 1914, and its political importance was not much greater. It was situated between militaristic France and imperialistic Austria; and its immediate neighbors: Saxony, Bavaria, Poland, and the Scandinavian kingdoms, were ready at any moment to profit by its misfortunes. Prussia's seizure of Silesia was, therefore, very much as if Belgium, learning in advance of Germany's plan of invasion, had seized German territory adjacent to its frontiers, and used it as a buffer to defend itself. It was the case of a small state preserving itself from the aggressions of a big neighbor aiming at world dominion. The methods employed may not have been technically legal, but they were justified; therefore Carlyle endorsed them. He believed that Frederick, cynic and materialist though he admits him to have been, nevertheless proved himself the valiant defender of his country's right to self government. He also regarded Frederick as the man who did most in the eighteenth century to preserve Europe from being dominated by a lawless imperialism. The rulers of Austria, because of their almost uninterrupted possession of the office of Holy Roman Emperor, openly aimed at universal dominion, and never lost an opportunity of trying to realize it by force of intrigue. France, too, was striving for the domination of Europe, and Russia was just becoming conspicuous for the brutality and unscrupulousness of its political methods quite as much as for the vastness of the power it had suddenly developed. When these facts are considered, Frederick's action must be admitted to have been, if not in the interests of democracy, at least in support of the principle of self-determination for which the Allies claim to be fighting against Germany; and Carlyle's endorsement of it at least creates the presumption that he would not sympathize with Germany, which today, greatly extended, is playing the part of the bullying nations he commended Frederick for thwarting.

He seems, however, to advocate autocracy, and to deride democracy, and this would appear to put him in agreement with the kaiser and his professorial prompters. It is true that he did deride the notion that the decision of the majority is always right. He likewise insisted that all the constitutionality and legality conceivable will not ensure good government or justify incompetence or unrighteousness in power; and that, conversely, no formal or technical irregularity disqualifies a government which is beneficent and capable. He ridiculed the idea that political equality is synonymous with justice, but this does not mean that he believed in caste rule. His opposition to political equality was inspired by no respect for inherited authority or the sanctity of property, but was the result of a conviction that it is a crude and materialistic way of trying to solve an immensely complicated problem by a simple mechanical process. Not external equality, but _equity_, must be achieved to make government effective and successful, was his contention. Making men equal in political power, in his opinion, ensured that the government would be dominated by the ignorance and selfishness of the mass of men, rather than by the enlightenment and integrity of the relatively small portion of mankind whom nature fits for leadership by endowing them with superior moral and intellectual powers. He believed no man entitled to authority except on the basis of character and ability, and he was as bitterly opposed to the German scheme of class rule as he was to the quantitative methods of the radicals. It is entirely wrong to think that, because he denied that universal suffrage will guarantee justice and humanity, he endorsed injustice and oppression. He didn't care how a government was organized or what it claimed to do, but he only inquired what it had succeeded in doing, and by this he judged it. The results of the German policy have been disaster for the world as well as for Germany, and he would condemn the German government for this, without being at all concerned about its form. He attached no importance to a government's form; all he judged by was its spirit. He believed that a government is inevitably the expression of the intelligence and morality of the people it represents, and that any form is capable of proving either good or bad in operation. Germany may be an autocracy in form, but the German people almost unanimously endorsed the war and its enormities; so what we have is an exhibition of the fallibility of popular judgment more than a display of the evils of autocracy. On this point Carlyle's position is clear, while that of the critics who accuse him of having endorsed German practices, because he denied that the majority is always right, is much more susceptible of being considered a justification of Kultur.

According to his interpretation of history, the case of Germany is perfectly plain. It is simply an instance of the degeneracy that, he claimed, inevitably follows the adoption of selfish or materialistic ambitions. The patient industry and the steady pursuit of the practical instead of the spectacular brought Germany to greatness, and placed vast power in the hands of her rulers. Then those rulers were tempted to misuse that power, and they fell. They decided to corrupt the people and make them the instrument by which world dominion could be achieved. They therefore cultivated the baser passions of the populace, and with infinite thoroughness and resource, they used every agency of the government to secure public endorsement for a policy of aggression, and for a swash-buckling and bombastic procedure that appealed only to the shallow and the reckless. They found this the easier because circumstances worked with them. The Franco-Prussian War inflamed German chauvinism and inflated German conceit to an incredible extent. The success of the war was more the result of France's weakness than Germany's strength, but it filled the German nation with extravagant enthusiasm, and inspired it with blind faith in its own invincibility. Then Germany changed from a country largely agricultural to one mainly industrial, and wealth came to kindle in a naturally gross and sensual people a passion for luxury, and to impart to a naturally arrogant one the insolence of material power. The effect of the first of these things is shown in the famous night-life of Berlin, which, before the war, was more gross and lavish than that of any other city in the world; while the overbearing character of the average German abroad shows how general was the influence of the second. Thus a change has been effected in the spirit of Germany. From a nation dull but honest, rude but sincere and kindly, it has been transformed by bad leadership and sudden prosperity into a people whose dominant characteristics are brutality and mendacity. Therefore the Germany that Carlyle praised is not the Germany that perpetrated the present war, and there is no doubt that his attitude towards the apostles of Kultur would be the direct opposite of what it was towards Frederick the Great and Bismarck.

THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS

"It need not be difficult either to define or to secure the freedom of the seas if the governments of the world sincerely desire to come to an agreement concerning it." At first thought, the most striking characteristic of these words of President Wilson in his address to the Senate last January is their optimism. Freedom of the seas, according to German authorities, is to be secured by various agencies, including the unrestricted use of the submarine and an independent Ireland. Primarily it is to be secured by the destruction of British naval predominance. Now British authorities have an inconvenient habit of stating that freedom of the seas was won long ago by means of the British navy, that it exists today in time of peace, and that its continuance depends upon Britannia ruling the waves. Our correspondence with Germany before we entered the war contains polite references to our coöperation with that country to secure freedom of the seas through recognition by treaties and international agreement of principles such as that of the immunity of private property, not contraband, from capture at sea. But Germany no longer thinks it possible to secure the freedom of the seas by the medium of scraps of paper, and other nations show an unflattering unanimity on this point, with regard to any scraps of paper to which the present German government might be a party. As to the submarine as a means of securing freedom of the seas, our entrance into the war is perhaps a sufficient indication of our estimate of it. The usefulness of an independent Ireland toward this end would seem even more likely to be limited. There remains the British navy, and it promises to remain.

And how are we to define the freedom of the seas? The term has been used in the past, and examination of our diplomatic correspondence will show that it has been used in this war, in three different ways. It has been used in protest against the appropriation by a single nation of definite areas of the high seas for exclusive uses. The sowing of mines and the proclamation of danger areas have led to its revival in this sense. It has been believed to mean the right of private citizens to continue sea-borne commerce in war time with a minimum of interruption. Our preoccupation with this usage of the term during the first years of the war won us a good deal of unpopularity with our present co-belligerents. It has been used with reference to the safety of human life on the sea. We are fighting Germany today upon this issue.

Is the problem one of war times only, or is there anything in the contention that the potential pressure of sea power operates in times of peace in restraint of commercial development? The question is not a simple one, and perhaps it will aid us in understanding the seeming optimism of our historian-president if we try to understand how this matter has been dealt with in the past. The sailing ship has given way to the turbine propeller, the galleon to the dreadnaught, the pinnace to the submarine, but is the freedom of the seas which is being fought for to-day of a kind different from that which was fought for in the days of Drake? And is it to be secured by the same or by different means?

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We need not dwell upon the recognition by Roman law of the principle of the right of all to use the seas as a highway, nor upon the claims of various city-states, notably Venice, to dominate portions of the Mediterranean. In view of recent pronouncements from the Vatican, it is interesting to remember that the claim of Venice, picturesquely symbolized by the annual ceremony of wedding the Adriatic, was based in part upon the gift of a ring accompanying an alleged papal grant, and that the struggle for the freedom of the ocean seas began as a challenge of two actual papal grants of wider significance. In 1454 Nicholas V rewarded the pertinacity of the Portuguese in pushing their discoveries southward along the coast of Africa, by granting to the crown of Portugal exclusive rights of navigation and trade south of Capes Bojador and Non. In 1493, Alexander VI rewarded the crown of Castile for the exploit of Columbus, by giving Spain rights similarly exclusive beyond the meridian one hundred degrees west of the Azores. The details of these arrangements were later modified by mutual agreement of the powers concerned, the final understanding being that Portugal had exclusive rights of trade and navigation by the eastern approach to the Indies, and Spain in the waters of what was supposed to be the western route thither.

Both powers stood ready to defend the privileges which the highest international authority of the period had granted them. They proceeded to deal summarily with all foreign vessels found in their preserves. Although the medieval maritime code, the _Consolato del Mare_, provided for sparing the lives of the crew of a captured vessel, the humanitarianism of the king of Portugal took a different form. John II issued orders to his captains to seize all vessels encountered in the barred zone, and instructed them to cast the crews into the sea, "In order that they may die a natural death."

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It was the mariners of France who most frequently braved this earlier form of "spurlos versenkt." They persisted in navigating the waters claimed by Portugal, and established a lucrative trade in Brazil. Their sovereign, Francis I, seems to have been the earliest champion among rulers of the freedom of the ocean seas. To the expostulations of the king of Portugal he maintained, "The act of traffic and exchange of goods is of all rights one of the most natural and best grounded." To the remonstrances of the Spanish ruler, the Emperor Charles V, he replied, "The sun shines for me as well as for others. I should like to see the clause of Adam's will which excludes me from the partition of the world." The tales of the exploits of Jean Ango, merchant of Dieppe, who sank his enormous fortune in his ventures; of his captains, Fleury, Verrazano, the brothers Parmentier, is an absorbing one. Seeking fortunes for themselves and revenge for comrades fallen into the hands of the enemy and treated as pirates; justifying their acts on the principle that the paths of the sea are free to all; they dared and suffered, and explored new lands, and brought glory to the maritime annals of France. They laid the foundations of her overseas commerce and colonies, but owing to the religious wars at home the superstructure was not built until a later age.

The exploits of the French sailors against the Spanish monopoly were succeeded by those of Hawkins and Drake. Elizabeth's dictum that the sea and the air were common to all was as emphatic as Francis I's utterances on the subject, and Elizabeth's was the better maintained. The victories of Drake in the Caribbean Sea in 1586 meant the death blow to Spain's hopes of effectually barring the western seas. She was felt to be within her rights, however, in establishing a monopoly of trade with her colonies in the new world. The English, in their efforts to obtain trading concessions, or at least a recognition of their right to trade in regions not actually occupied by Spain, following French precedent, sedulously avoided making any agreement that might seem to acknowledge Spain's right to prevent the vessels of other nations from sailing the American seas.