Essays in War Time

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The same can scarcely be said as regards Dr. Woods' remaining cause of
war. If by racialism we are to understand nationalism, this has of late
been a serious and ever-growing provocative of war. Internationalism of
feeling is much less marked now than it was four centuries ago.
Nationalities have developed a new self-consciousness, a new impulse to
regain their old territories or to acquire new territories. Not only
Pan-Germanism, Pan-Slavism, and British Imperialism, like all other
imperialisms, but even the national ambitions of some smaller Powers
have acquired a new and dangerous energy. They are not the less
dangerous when, as is indeed most frequently the case, they merely
represent the ambition, not of the people as a whole, but merely of a
military or bureaucratic clique, of a small chauvinistic group, yet
noisy and energetic enough to win over unscrupulous politicians. A
German soldier, a young journalist of ability, recently wrote home from
the trenches: "I have often dreamed of a new Europe in which all the
nations would be fraternally united and live together as one people; it
was an end which democratic feeling seemed to be slowly preparing. Now
this terrible war has been unchained, fomented by a few men who are
sending their subjects, their slaves rather, to the battlefield, to
slay each other like wild beasts. I should like to go towards these men
they call our enemies and say, 'Brothers, let us fight together. The
enemy is behind us.' Yes, since I have been wearing this uniform I feel
no hatred for those who are in front, but my hatred has grown for those
in power who are behind." That is a sentiment which must grow mightily
with the growth of democracy, and as it grows the danger of nationalism
as a cause of war must necessarily decrease.

There is, however, one group of causes of war, of the first importance,
which Dr. Woods has surprisingly omitted, and that is the group of
political causes. It is by overlooking the political aspects of war
that Dr. Woods' discussion is most defective. Supposed political
necessity has been in modern times perhaps the very chief cause of war.
That is to say that wars are largely waged for what has been supposed
to be the protection, or the furtherance, of the civilised organisation
which orders the temporal benefits of a nation. This is admirably
illustrated by all three of the great European wars in which England
has taken part during the past four centuries: the war against Spain,
the war against France, and the present war against Germany. The
fundamental motive of England's participation in all these wars has
been what was conceived to be the need of England's safety, it was
essentially political. A small island Power, dependent on its fleet,
and yet very closely adjoining the continental mainland, is vitally
concerned in the naval developments of possibly hostile Powers and in
the military movements which affect the opposite coast. Spain, France,
and Germany all successively threatened England by a formidable fleet,
and they all sought to gain possession of the coast opposite England.
To England, therefore, it seemed a measure of political self-defence to
strike a blow as each fresh menace arose. In every case Belgium has
been the battlefield on land. The neutrality of Belgium is felt to be
politically vital to England. Therefore, the invasion of Belgium by a
Great Power is to England an immediate signal of war. It is not only
England's wars that have been mainly political; the same is true of
Germany's wars ever since Prussia has had the leadership of Germany.
The political condition of a country without natural frontiers and
surrounded by powerful neighbours is a perpetual source of wars which,
in Germany's case, have been, by deliberate policy, offensively
defensive.

When we realise the fundamental importance of the political causation
of warfare, the whole problem of the ultimate fate of war becomes at
once more hopeful. The orderly growth and stability of nations has in
the past seemed to demand war. But war is not the only method of
securing these ends, and to most people nowadays it scarcely seems the
best method. England and France have fought against each other for many
centuries. They are now convinced that they really have nothing to
fight about, and that the growth and stability of each country are
better ensured by friendship than by enmity. There cannot be a doubt of
it. But where is the limit to the extension of that same principle?
France and Germany, England and Germany, have just as much to lose by
enmity, just as much to gain by friendship, and alike on both sides.

The history of Europe and the charts of Mr. Baltzly clearly show that
this consideration has really been influential. We find that there is a
progressive tendency for the nations of Europe to abandon warfare.
Sweden, Denmark, and Holland, all vigorous and warlike peoples, have
long ceased to fight. They have found their advantage in the
abandonment of war, but that abandonment has been greatly stimulated by
awe of their mightier neighbours. And therein, again, we have a clue to
the probable course of the future.

For when we realise that the fundamental political need of
self-preservation and good order has been a main cause of warfare, and
when we further realise that the same ends may be more satisfactorily
attained without war under the influence of a sufficiently firm
external pressure working in harmony with the growth of internal
civilisation, we see that the problem of fighting among nations is the
same as that of fighting among individuals. Once upon a time good order
and social stability were maintained in a community by the method of
fighting among the individuals constituting the community. No doubt all
sorts of precious virtues were thus generated, and no doubt in the
general opinion no better method seemed possible or even conceivable.
But, as we know, with the development of a strong central Power, and
with the growth of enlightenment, it was realised that political
stability and good order were more satisfactorily maintained by a
tribunal, having a strong police force behind it, than by the method of
allowing the individuals concerned to fight out their quarrels between
themselves.

Fighting between national groups of individuals stands on precisely the
same footing as fighting between individuals. The political stability
and good order of nations, it is beginning to be seen, can be more
satisfactorily maintained by a tribunal, having a strong police force
behind it, than by the method of allowing the individual nations
concerned to fight out quarrels between themselves. The stronger
nations have for a large part imposed this peace upon the smaller
nations of Europe to the great benefit of the latter. How can we impose
a similar peace upon the stronger nations, for their own benefit and
for the benefit of the whole world? To that task all our energies must
be directed.

A long series of eminent thinkers and investigators, from Comte and
Buckle a century ago to Dr. Woods and Mr. Baltzly to-day, have assured
us that war is diminishing and even that the war-like spirit is
extinct. It is certainly not true that the war-like spirit is extinct,
even in the most civilised and peaceful peoples, and we need not desire
its extinction, for it is capable of transformation into shapes of the
finest use for humanity. But the vast conflagration of to-day must not
conceal from our eyes the great central fact that war is diminishing,
and will one day disappear as completely as the mediaeval scourge of
the Black Death. To reach this consummation all the best humanising and
civilising energies of mankind will be needed.

[1] It has been argued (as by Filippi Carli, _La Ricchezza e la Guerra_,
1916) that the Germans are especially unable to understand that the
prosperity of other countries is beneficial to them, whether or not
under German control, and that they differ from the English and French
in believing that economic conquests should involve political conquests.

VI

WAR AND THE BIRTH-RATE

During recent years the faith had grown among progressive persons in
various countries, not excluding Germany, that civilisation was building
up almost impassable barriers against any great war. These barriers were
thought to be of various kinds, even apart from the merely sentimental
and humanitarian developments of pacific feeling. They were especially
of an economic kind, and that on a double basis, that of Capital and
that of Labour. It was believed, on the one hand, that the international
ramifications of Capital, and the complicated commercial and financial
webs which bind nations together, would cause so vivid a realisation of
the disasters of war as to erect a wholesomely steadying effect whenever
the danger of war loomed in sight. On the other hand, it was felt that
the international unity of interest among the workers, the growth of
Labour's favourite doctrine that there is no conflict between nations,
but only between classes, and even the actual international organisation
and bonds of the workers' associations, would interpose a serious menace
to the plans of war-makers. These influences were real and important.
But, as we know, when the decisive moment came, the diplomatists and the
militarists were found to be at the helm, to steer the ship of State in
each country concerned, and those on board had no voice in determining
the course. In England only can there be said to have been any show of
consulting Parliament, but at that moment the situation had already so
far developed that there was little left but to accept it. The Great War
of to-day has shown that such barriers against war as we at present
possess may crumble away in a moment at the shock of the war-making
machine.

We are to-day forced to undertake a more searching inquiry into the
forces which, in civilisation, operate against war. I wish to call
attention here to one such influence of fundamental character, which has
not been unrecognised, but possesses an importance we are often apt to
overlook.

"A French gentleman, well acquainted with the constitution of his
country," wrote Thicknesse in 1776,[1] "told me above eight years since
that France increased so rapidly in peace that they must necessarily
have a war every twelve or fourteen years to carry off the refuse of the
people." Recently a well-known German Socialist, Dr. Eduard David,
member of the Reichstag and a student of the population question,
setting forth the same great truth (in _Die Neue Generation_ for
November, 1914) states that it would have been impossible for Germany to
wage the present war if it had not been for the high German birth-rate
during the past half-century. And the impossibility of this war would,
for Dr. David, have been indeed tragic.

A more distinguished social hygienist, Professor Max Gruber, of Munich,
who took a leading part in organising that marvellous Exposition of
Hygiene at Dresden which has been Germany's greatest service to real
civilisation in recent years, lately set forth an identical opinion.
The war, he declares, was inevitable and unavoidable, and Germany was
responsible for it, not, he hastens to add, in any moral sense, but in a
biological sense, because in forty-four years Germans have increased in
numbers from forty millions to eighty millions. The war was, therefore,
a "biological necessity."

If we survey the belligerent nations in the war we may say that those
which took the initiative in drawing it on, or at all events were most
prepared to welcome it, were Russia, Austria, Germany, and Serbia. We
may also note that these include nearly all the nations in Europe with a
high birth-rate. We may further note that they are all nations
which--putting aside their cultural summits and taking them in the
mass--are among the most backward in Europe; the fall in the birth-rate
has not yet had time to permeate them. On the other hand, of the
belligerent peoples of to-day, all indications point to the French as
the people most intolerant, silently but deeply, of the war they are so
ably and heroically waging. Yet the France of the present, with the
lowest birth-rate and the highest civilisation, was a century ago the
France of a birth-rate higher than that of Germany to-day, the most
militarist and aggressive of nations, a perpetual menace to Europe. For
all those among us who have faith in civilisation and humanity, and are
unable to believe that war can ever be a civilising or humanising method
of progress, it must be a daily prayer that the fall of the birth-rate
may be hastened.

It seems too elementary a point to insist on, yet the mists of ignorance
and prejudice are so dense, the cataract of false patriotism is so
thick, that for many even the most elementary truths cannot be
discerned. In most of the smaller nations, indeed, an intelligent view
prevails. Their smallness has, on the one hand, rendered them more open
to international culture, and, on the other hand, enabled them to
outgrow the illusions of militarism; there is a higher standard of
education among them; their birth-rates are low and they accept that
fact as a condition of progressive civilisation. That is the case in
Switzerland, as in Norway, and notably in Holland. It is not so in the
larger nations. Here we constantly find, even in those lands where the
bulk of the population are civilised and reasonably level-headed, a small
minority who publicly tear their hair and rage at the steady decline in
the birth-rate. It is, of course, only the declining birth-rate of their
own country that they have in view; for they are "patriots," which means
that the fall of the birth-rate in all other countries but their own is
a source of much gratification. "Woe to us," they exclaim in effect, "if
we follow the example of these wicked and degenerate peoples! Our nation
needs men. We have to populate the earth and to carry the blessings of
our civilised culture all over the world. In executing that high mission
we cannot have too much cannon-fodder in defending ourselves against the
jealousy and aggression of other nations. Let us promote parentage by
law; let us repress by law every influence which may encourage a falling
birth-rate; otherwise there is nothing left to us but speedy national
disaster, complete and irremediable." This is not caricature,[2] though
these apostles of "race-suicide" may easily arouse a smile by the verbal
ardour of their procreative energy. But we have to recognise that in
Germany for years past it has been difficult to take up a serious
periodical without finding some anxiously statistical article about the
falling birth-rate and some wild recommendations for its arrest, for it
is the militaristic German who of all Europeans is most worried by this
fall; indeed Germans often even refuse to recognise it. Thus to-day we
find Professor Gruber declaring that if the population of the German
Empire continues to grow at the rate of the first five years of the
present century, at the end of the century it will have reached
250,000,000. By such a vast increase in population, the Professor
complacently concludes, "Germany will be rendered invulnerable." We know
what that means. The presence of an "invulnerable" nation among nations
that are "vulnerable" means inevitable aggression and war, a perpetual
menace to civilisation and humanity. It is not along that line that hope
can be found for the world's future, or even Germany's future, and
Gruber conveniently neglects to estimate what, on his basis, the
population of Russia will be at the end of the century. But Gruber's
estimate is altogether fallacious. German births have fallen, roughly
speaking, about one per thousand of the population, every year since the
beginning of the century, and it would be equally reasonable to estimate
that if they continue to fall at the present rate (which we cannot, of
course, anticipate) births will altogether have ceased in Germany long
before the end of the century. The German birth-rate reached its climax
forty years ago (1871-1880) with 40.7 per 1,000; in 1906 it was 34 per
1,000; in 1909, 31 per 1,000; in 1912, 28 per 1,000; in an almost
measurable period of time, in all probability long before the end of the
century, it will have reached the same low level as that of France, when
there will be little difference between the "invulnerability" of France
and of Germany, a consummation which, for the world's sake, is far more
devoutly to be wished than that anticipated by Gruber.

We have to remember, moreover, that this tendency is by no means, as we
are sometimes tempted to suppose, a sign of degeneration or of decay;
but, on the contrary, a sign of progress. When we survey broadly that
course of zoological evolution of which we are pleased to regard Man as
the final outcome, we note that on the whole the mighty stream has
become the less productive as it has advanced. We note the same of the
various lines taken separately. We note, also, that intelligence and all
the qualities we admire have usually been most marked in the less
prolific species. Progress, roughly speaking, has proved incompatible
with high fertility. And the reason is not far to seek. If the creature
produced is more evolved, it is more complex and more highly organised,
and that means the need for much time and much energy. To attain this,
the offspring must be few and widely spaced; it cannot be attained at
all under conditions that are highly destructive. The humble herring,
which evokes the despairing envy of our human apostles of fertility, is
largely composed of spawn, and produces a vast number of offspring, of
which few reach maturity. The higher mammals spend their lives in the
production of a small number of offspring, most of whom survive. Thus,
even before Man began, we see a fundamental principle established, and
the relationship between the birth-rate and the death-rate in working
order. All progressive evolution may be regarded as a mechanism for
concentrating an ever greater amount of energy in the production of ever
fewer and ever more splendid individuals. Nature is perpetually striving
to replace the crude ideal of quantity by the higher ideal of quality.

In human history these same tendencies have continually been
illustrated. The Greeks, our pioneers in all insight and knowledge,
grappled (as Professor Myres has lately set forth[3]), and realised that
they were grappling, with this same problem. Even in the Minoan Age
their population would appear to have been full to overflowing; "there
were too many people in the world," and to the old Greeks the Trojan War
was the earliest divinely-appointed remedy. Wars, famines, pestilences,
colonisation, wide-spread infanticide were the methods, voluntary and
involuntary, by which this excessive birth-rate was combated, while the
greatest of Greek philosophers, a Plato or an Aristotle, clearly saw
that a regulated and limited birth-rate, a eugenically improved race, is
the road to higher civilisation. We may even see in Greek antiquity how
a sudden rise in industrialism leads to a crowded and fertile urban
population, the extension of slavery, and all the resultant evils. It
was a foretaste of what was seen during the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, when a sudden industrial expansion led to an enormously high
birth-rate, a servile urban proletariat (that very word indicates, as
Roscher has pointed out, that a large family means inferiority), and a
consequent outburst of misery and degradation from which we are only now
emerging.

As we are now able to realise, the sudden expansion of the population
accompanying the industrial revolution was an abnormal and, from the
point of view of society, a morbid phenomenon. All the evidence goes to
show that previously the population tended to increase very slowly, and
social evolution was thus able to take place equably and harmoniously.
It is only gradually that the birth-rate has begun to right itself
again. The movement, as is well known, began in France, always the most
advanced outpost of European civilisation. It has now spread to England,
to Germany, to all Europe, to the whole world indeed, in so far as the
world is in touch with European civilisation, and has long been well
marked in the United States.

When we realise this we are also enabled to realise how futile, how
misplaced, and how mischievous it is to raise the cry of "Race-suicide."
It is futile because no outcry can affect a world-wide movement of
civilisation. It is misplaced because the rise and fall of the
population is not a matter of the birth-rate alone, but of the
birth-rate combined with the death-rate, and while we cannot expect to
touch the former we can influence the latter. It is mischievous because
by fighting against a tendency which is not only inevitable but
altogether beneficial, we blind ourselves to the advance of civilisation
and risk the misdirection of all our energies. How far this blindness
may be carried we see in the false patriotism of those who in the
decline of the birth-rate fancy they see the ruin of their own
particular country, oblivious of the fact that we are concerned with a
phenomenon of world-wide extension.

The whole tendency of civilisation is to reduce the birth-rate, as
Leroy-Beaulieu concludes in his comprehensive work on the population
question. We may go further, and assert with the distinguished German
economist, Roscher, that the chief cause of the superiority of a highly
civilised State over lower stages of civilisation is precisely a greater
degree of forethought and self-control in marriage and child-bearing.[4]
Instead of talking about race-suicide, we should do well to observe at
what an appalling rate, even yet, the population is increasing, and we
should note that it is everywhere the poorest and most primitive
countries, and in every country (as in Germany) the poorest regions,
which show the highest birth-rate. On every hand, however, are hopeful
signs. Thus, in Russia, where a very high birth-rate is to some extent
compensated by a very high death-rate--the highest infantile death-rate
in Europe--the birth-rate is falling, and we may anticipate that it will
fall very rapidly with the extension of education and social
enlightenment among the masses. Driven out of Europe, the alarmist falls
back on the "Yellow Peril." But in Japan we find amid confused
variations of the birth-rate and the death-rate nothing to indicate any
alarming expansion of the population, while as to China we are in the
dark. We only know that in China there is a high birth-rate largely
compensated by a very high death-rate. We also know, however, that as
Lowes Dickinson has lately reminded us, "the fundamental attitude of the
Chinese towards life is that of the most modern West,"[5] and we shall
probably find that with the growth of enlightenment the Chinese will
deal with their high birth-rate in a far more radical and thorough
manner than we have ever ventured on.

One last resort the would-be patriotic alarmist seeks when all others
fail. He is good enough to admit that a general decline in the
birth-rate might be beneficial. But, he points out, it affects social
classes unequally. It is initiated, not by the degenerate and the unfit,
whom we could well dispense with, but by the very best classes in the
community, the well-to-do and the educated. One is inclined to remark,
at once, that a social change initiated by its best social classes is
scarcely likely to be pernicious. Where, it may be asked, if not among
the most educated classes, is any process of amelioration to be
initiated? We cannot make the world topsy-turvy to suit the convenience
of topsy-turvy minds. All social movements tend to begin at the top and
to permeate downwards. This has been the case with the decline in the
birth-rate, but it is already well marked among the working classes, and
has only failed to touch the lowest social stratum of all, too
weak-minded and too reckless to be amenable to ordinary social motives.
The rational method of meeting this situation is not a propaganda in
favour of procreation--a truly imbecile propaganda, since it is only
carried out and only likely to be carried out, by the very class which
we wish to sterilise--but by a wise policy of regulative eugenics. We
have to create the motives, and it is not an impossible task, which will
act even upon the weak-minded and reckless lowest social stratum.

These facts have a significance which many of us have failed to realise.
The Great War has brought home the gravity of that significance. It has
been the perpetual refrain of the Pan-Germanists for many years that the
vast and sudden expansion of the German peoples makes necessary a new
movement of the German nations into the world and a new enlargement of
frontiers, in other words, War. It is not only among the Germans, though
among them it may have been more conscious, that a similar cause has led
to the like result. It has ever been so. The expanding nation has always
been a menace to the world and to itself. The arrest of the falling
birth-rate, it cannot be too often repeated, would be the arrest of all
civilisation and of all humanity.

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