An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation

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And yet it is also a matter of common notoriety that large aggregates of
men, not to speak of sporadic individuals, will on occasion shift their
allegiance with the most felicitous effect and with no sensible loss of
self-respect or of their good name. Such a shift is to be seen in
multiple in the German nation within the past half-century, when, for
instance, the Hanoverians, the Saxons, and even the Holsteiners in very
appreciable numbers, not to mention the subjects of minuscular
principalities whose names have been forgotten in the shuffle, all
became good and loyal subjects of the Empire and of the Imperial
dynasty,--good and loyal without reservation, as has abundantly
appeared. So likewise within a similar period the inhabitants of the
Southern States repudiated their allegiance to the Union, putting in its
place an equivalent loyalty to their new-made country; and then, when
the new national establishment slipped out from under their feet they
returned as whole-heartedly as need be to their earlier allegiance. In
each of these moves, taken with deliberation, it is not to be doubted
that this body of citizens have been moved by an unimpeachable spirit of
patriotic honour. No one who is in any degree conversant with the facts
is likely to question the declaration that it would be a perversion, not
to say an inversion, of fact to rate their patriotic devotion to the
Union today lower than that of any other section of the country or any
other class or condition of men.

But there is more, and in a sense worse, to be found along the same
general line of evidence touching this sublimated sentiment of group
solidarity that is called nationalism. The nation, of course, is large;
the larger the better, it is believed. It is so large, indeed, that
considered as a group or community of men living together it has no
sensible degree of homogeneity in any of their material circumstances or
interests; nor is anything more than an inconsiderable fraction of the
aggregate population, territory, industry, or daily life known to any
one of these patriotic citizens except by remote and highly dubious
hearsay. The one secure point on which there is a (constructive)
uniformity is the matter of national allegiance; which grows stronger
and more confident with every increase in aggregate mass and volume. It
is also not doubtful, e.g., that if the people of the British Dominions
in North America should choose to throw in their national lot with the
Union, all sections and classes, except those whose pecuniary interest
in a protective tariff might be conceived to suffer, would presently
welcome them; nor is it doubtful that American nationality would cover
the new and larger aggregate as readily as the old. Much the same will
hold true with respect to the other countries colonised under British
auspices. And there is no conclusive reason for drawing the limit of
admissible national extension at that point.

So much, however, is fairly within the possibilities of the calculable
future; its realisation would turn in great measure on the
discontinuance of certain outworn or disserviceable institutional
arrangements; as, e.g., the remnants of a decayed monarchy, and the
legally protected vested interests of certain business enterprises and
of certain office-holding classes. What more and farther might
practicably be undertaken in this way, in the absence of marplot
office-holders, office-seekers, sovereigns, priests and monopolistic
business concerns sheltered under national animosities and restraints of
trade, would be something not easy to assign a limit to. All the minor
neutrals, that cluster about the North Sea, could unquestionably be
drawn into such a composite nationality, in the absence, or with due
disregard, of those classes, families and individuals whose pecuniary or
invidious gain is dependent on or furthered by the existing division of
these peoples.

The projected defensive league of neutrals is, in effect, an inchoate
coalescence of the kind. Its purpose is the safeguarding of the common
peace and freedom, which is also the avowed purpose and justification of
all those modern nations that have outlived the regime of dynastic
ambition and so of enterprise in dominion for dominion's sake, and have
passed into the neutral phase of nationality; or it should perhaps
rather be said that such is the end of endeavour and the warrant of
existence and power for these modern national establishments in so far
as they have outlived and repudiated such ambitions of a dynastic or a
quasi-dynastic order, and so have taken their place as intrinsically
neutral commonwealths.

It is only in the common defense (or in the defense of the like
conditions of life for their fellowmen elsewhere) that the citizens of
such a commonwealth can without shame entertain or put in evidence a
spirit of patriotic solidarity; and it is only by specious and
sophistical appeal to the national honour--a conceit surviving out of
the dynastic past--that the populace of such a commonwealth can be
stirred to anything beyond a defense of their own proper liberties or
the liberties of like-minded men elsewhere, in so far as they are not
still imbued with something of the dynastic animus and the chauvinistic
animosities which they have formally repudiated in repudiating the
feudalistic principles of the dynastic State.

The "nation," without the bond of dynastic loyalty, is after all a
make-shift idea, an episodic half-way station in the sequence, and
loyalty, in any proper sense, to the nation as such is so much of a
make-believe, that in the absence of a common defense to be safeguarded
any such patriotic conceit must lose popular assurance and, with the
passing of generations, fall insensibly into abeyance as an archaic
affectation. The pressure of danger from without is necessary to keep
the national spirit alert and stubborn, in case the pressure from
within, that comes of dynastic usufruct working for dominion, has been
withdrawn. With further extension of the national boundaries, such that
the danger of gratuitous infraction from without grows constantly less
menacing, while the traditional regime of international animosities
falls more and more remotely into the background, the spirit of
nationalism is fairly on the way to obsolescence through disuse. In
other words, the nation, as a commonwealth, being a partisan
organisation for a defensive purpose, becomes _functa officio_ in
respect of its nationalism and its patriotic ties in somewhat the same
measure as the national coalition grows to such a size that partisanship
is displaced by a cosmopolitan security.

Doubtless the falling into abeyance through disuse of so pleasing a
virtue as patriotic devotion will seem an impossibly distasteful
consummation; and about tastes there is no disputing, but tastes are
mainly creations of habit. Except for the disquieting name of the thing,
there is today little stands in the way of a cosmopolitan order of
human intercourse unobtrusively displacing national allegiance; except
for vested interests in national offices and international
discriminations, and except for those peoples among whom national life
still is sufficiently bound up with dynastic ambition.

In an earlier passage the patriotic spirit has been defined as a sense
of partisan solidarity in point of prestige, and sufficient argument has
been spent in confirming the definition and showing its implications.
With the passing of all occasion for a partisan spirit as touches the
common good, through coalescence of the parts between which partisan
discrepancies have hitherto been kept up, there would also have passed
all legitimate occasion for or provocation to an intoxication of
invidious prestige on national lines,--and there is no prestige that is
not of an invidious nature, that being, indeed, the whole of its nature.
He would have to be a person of praeternatural patriotic sensibilities
who could fall into an emotional state by reason of the national
prestige of such a coalition commonwealth as would be made up, e.g., of
the French and English-speaking peoples, together with those other
neutrally and peaceably inclined European communities that are of a
sufficiently mature order to have abjured dynastic ambitions of
dominion, and perhaps including the Chinese people as well. Such a
coalition may now fairly be said to be within speaking distance, and
with its consummation, even in the inchoate shape of a defensive league
of neutrals, the eventual abeyance of that national allegiance and
national honour that bulks so large in the repertory of current
eloquence would also come in prospect.

All this is by no means saying that love of country, and of use and wont
as it runs in one's home area and among one's own people, would suffer
decay, or even abatement. The provocation to nostalgia would presumably
be as good as ever. It is even conceivable that under such a
(contemplated) regime of unconditional security, attachment to one's own
habitat and social circumstances might grow to something more than is
commonly seen in the precarious situation in which the chances of a
quiet life are placed today. But nostalgia is not a bellicose distemper,
nor does it make for gratuitous disturbance of peaceable alien peoples;
neither is it the spirit in which men lend themselves to warlike
enterprise looking to profitless dominion abroad. Men make patriotic
sacrifices of life and substance in spite of home-sickness rather than
by virtue of it.

* * * * *

The aim of this long digression has been to show that patriotism, of
that bellicose kind that seeks satisfaction in inflicting damage and
discomfort on the people of other nations, is not of the essence of
human life; that it is of the nature of habit, induced by circumstances
in the past and handed on by tradition and institutional arrangements
into the present; and that men can, without mutilation, divest
themselves of it, or perhaps rather be divested of it by force of
circumstances which will set the current of habituation the contrary
way.

The change of habituation necessary to bring about such a decay of the
bellicose national spirit would appear to be of a negative order, at
least in the main. It would be an habituation to unconditional peace and
security; in other words, to the absence of provocation, rather than a
coercive training away from the bellicose temper. This bellicose temper,
as it affects men collectively, appears to be an acquired trait; and it
should logically disappear in time in the absence of those conditions by
impact of which it has been acquired. Such obsolescence of patriotism,
however, would not therefore come about abruptly or swiftly, since the
patriotic spirit has by past use and wont, and by past indoctrination,
been so thoroughly worked into the texture of the institutional fabric
and into the commonsense taste and morality, that its effectual
obsolescence will involve a somewhat comprehensive displacement and
mutation throughout the range of institutions and popular conceits that
have been handed down. And institutional changes take time, being
creations of habit. Yet, again, there is the qualification to this last,
that since the change in question appears to be a matter, not of
acquiring a habit and confirming it in the shape of an article of
general use and wont, but of forgetting what once was learned, the time
and experience to be allowed for its decay need logically not equal that
required for its acquirement, either in point of duration or in point of
the strictness of discipline necessary to inculcate it.

While the spirit of nationalism is such an acquired trait, and while it
should therefore follow that the chief agency in divesting men of it
must be disuse of the discipline out of which it has arisen, yet a
positive, and even something of a drastic discipline to the contrary
effect need not be altogether ineffectual in bringing about its
obsolescence. The case of the Chinese people seems to argue something of
the sort. Not that the Chinese are simply and neutrally unpatriotic;
they appear also to be well charged with disloyalty to their alien
rulers. But along with a sense of being on the defensive in their common
concerns, there is also the fact that they appear not to be appreciably
patriotic in the proper sense; they are not greatly moved by a spirit
of nationality. And this failure of the national spirit among them can
scarcely be set down to a neutral disuse of that discipline which has on
the other hand induced a militant nationalism in the peoples of
Christendom; it should seem more probable, at least, that this relative
absence of a national ambition is traceable in good part to its having
been positively bred out of them by the stern repression of all such
aspirations under the autocratic rule of their alien masters.

* * * * *

Peace on terms of submission and non-resistance to the ordinary
exactions and rulings of those Imperial authorities to whom such
submission may become necessary, then, will be contingent on the virtual
abeyance of the spirit of national pride in the peoples who so are to
come under Imperial rule. A sufficient, by no means necessarily a total,
elimination or decadence of this proclivity will be the condition
precedent of any practicable scheme for a general peace on this footing.
How large an allowance of such animus these prospectively subject
peoples might still carry, without thereby assuring the defeat of any
such plan, would in great measure depend on the degree of clemency or
rigor with which the superior authority might enforce its rule. It is
not that a peace plan of this nature need precisely be considered to
fall outside the limits of possibility, on account of this necessary
condition, but it is at the best a manifestly doubtful matter. Advocates
of a negotiated peace should not fail to keep in mind and make public
that the plan which they advocate carries with it, as a sequel or
secondary phase, such an unconditional surrender and a consequent regime
of non-resistance, and that there still is grave doubt whether the
peoples of these Western nations are at present in a sufficiently
tolerant frame of mind, or can in the calculable future come in for such
a tolerantly neutral attitude in point of national pride, as to submit
in any passable fashion to any alien Imperial rule.

If the spiritual difficulty presented by this prevalent spirit of
national pride--sufficiently stubborn still, however inane a conceit it
may seem on sober reflection--if this animus of factional
insubordination could be overcome or in some passable measure be
conciliated or abated, there is much to be said in favor of such a plan
of peaceable submission to an extraneous and arbitrary authority, and
therefore also for that plan of negotiated peace by means of which
events would be put in train for its realisation.

Any passably dispassionate consideration of the projected regime will
come unavoidably to the conclusion that the prospectively subject
peoples should have no legitimate apprehension of loss or disadvantage
in the material respect. It is, of course, easy for an unreflecting
person to jump to the conclusion that subjection to an alien power must
bring grievous burdens, in the way of taxes and similar impositions. But
reflection will immediately show that no appreciable increase, over the
economic burdens already carried by the populace under their several
national establishments, could come of such a move.

As bearing on this question it is well to call to mind that the
contemplated imperial dominion is designed to be very wide-reaching and
with very ample powers. Its nearest historical analogue, of course, is
the Roman imperial dominion--in the days of the Antonines--and that the
nearest analogue to the projected German peace is the Roman peace, in
the days of its best security. There is every warrant for the
presumption that the contemplated Imperial dominion is to be
substantially all-inclusive. Indeed there is no stopping place for the
projected enterprise short of an all-inclusive dominion. And there will
consequently be no really menacing outside power to be provided against.
Consequently there will be but little provision necessary for the common
defense, as compared, e.g., with the aggregate of such provision found
necessary for self-defense on the part of the existing nations acting in
severalty and each jealously guarding its own national integrity.
Indeed, compared with the burden of competitive armament to which the
peoples of Europe have been accustomed, the need of any armed force
under the new regime should be an inconsiderable matter, even when there
is added to the necessary modicum of defensive preparation the more
imperative and weightier provision of force with which to keep the peace
at home.

Into the composition of this necessary modicum of armed force slight if
any contingents of men would be drawn from the subject peoples, for the
reason that no great numbers would be needed; as also because no devoted
loyalty to the dynasty could reasonably be looked for among them, even
if no positive insecurity were felt to be involved in their employment.
On this head the projected scheme unambiguously commends itself as a
measure of economy, both in respect of the pecuniary burdens demanded
and as regards the personal annoyance of military service.

As a further count, it is to be presumed that the burden of the Imperial
government and its bureaucratic administration--what would be called the
cost of maintenance and repairs of the dynastic establishment and its
apparatus of control--would be borne by the subject peoples. Here again
one is warranted in looking for a substantial economy to be effected by
such a centralised authority, and a consequent lighter aggregate burden
on the subjects. Doubtless, the "overhead charges" would not be reduced
to their practicable minimum. Such a governmental establishment, with
its bureaucratic personnel, its "civil list" and its privileged classes,
would not be conducted on anything like a parsimonious footing. There is
no reason to apprehend any touch of modesty in the exactions of such a
dynastic establishment for itself or in behalf of its underlying
hierarchy of gentlefolk.

There is also to be counted in, in the concrete instance on which the
argument here turns, a more or less considerable burden of contributions
toward the maintenance and augmentation of that culture that has been
the topic of so many encomiums. At this point it should be recalled that
it is the pattern of Periclean Athens that is continually in mind in
these encomiums. Which brings up, in this immediate connection, the
dealings of Periclean Athens with the funds of the League, and the
source as well as the destination of these surplus funds. Out of it all
came the works on the Acropolis, together with much else of intellectual
and artistic life that converged upon and radiated from this Athenian
center of culture. The vista of _Denkmaeler_ that so opens to the vision
of a courageous fancy is in itself such a substance of things hoped for
as should stir the heart of all humane persons.[8] The cost of this
subvention of Culture would doubtless be appreciable, but those grave
men who have spent most thought on this prospective cultural gain to be
had from the projected Imperial rule appear to entertain no doubt as to
its being worth all that it would cost.

[Footnote 8: _Denk 'mall_]

Any one who is inclined to rate the prospective pecuniary costs and
losses high would doubtless be able to find various and sundry items of
minor importance to add to this short list of general categories on the
side of cost; but such additional items, not fairly to be included under
these general captions, would after all be of minor importance, in the
aggregate or in detail, and would not appreciably affect the grand
balance of pecuniary profit and loss to be taken account of in any
appraisal of the projected Imperial regime. There should evidently be
little ground to apprehend that its installation would entail a net loss
or a net increase of pecuniary burdens. There is, of course, the
ill-defined and scarcely definable item of expenditure under the general
head of Gentility, Dignity, Distinction, Magnificence, or whatever term
may seem suitable to designate that consumption of goods and services
that goes to maintain the high repute of the Court and to keep the
underlying gentlefolk in countenance. In its pecuniary incidence this
line of (necessary) expenditure belongs under the rubric of Conspicuous
Waste; and one will always have to face the disquieting flexibility of
this item of expenditure. The consumptive demand of this kind is in an
eminent degree "indefinitely extensible," as the phrasing of the
economists would have it, and as various historical instances of courtly
splendor and fashionable magnificence will abundantly substantiate.
There is a constant proclivity to advance this conventional "standard of
living" to the limit set by the available means; and yet these
conventional necessities will ordinarily not, in the aggregate, take up
all the available means; although now and again, as under the _Ancien
Regime_, and perhaps in Imperial Rome, the standard of splendid living
may also exceed the current means in hand and lead to impoverishment of
the underlying community.

An analysis of the circumstances governing this flexibility of the
conventional standard of living and of pecuniary magnificence can not be
gone into here. In the case under consideration it will have to be left
as an indeterminate but considerable item in the burden of cost which
the projected Imperial rule may be counted on to impose on the
underlying peoples. The cost of the Imperial court, nobility, and civil
service, therefore, would be a matter of estimate, on which no close
agreement would be expected; and yet, here as in an earlier connection,
it seems a reasonable expectation that sufficient dignity and
magnificence could be put in evidence by such a large-scale
establishment at a lower aggregate cost than the aggregate of
expenditures previously incurred for the like ends by various nations
working in severalty and at cross purposes.

Doubtless it would be altogether a mistaken view of this production of
dignity by means of a lavish expenditure on superfluities, to believe
that the same principle of economy should apply here as was found
applicable in the matter of armament for defense. With the installation
of a collective national establishment, to include substantially all the
previously competing nations, the need of defensive armament should in
all reason decline to something very inconsiderable indeed. But it would
be hasty to conclude that with the coalescence of these nations under
one paramount control the need of creating notoriety and prestige for
this resulting central establishment by the consumption of decorative
superfluities would likewise decline. The need of such dignity and
magnificence is only in part, perhaps a minor part, of a defensive
character. For the greater part, no doubt, the motive to this
conspicuously wasteful consumption is personal vanity, in Imperial
policy as well as in the private life of fashion,--or perhaps one should
more deferentially say that it is a certain range of considerations
which would be identified as personal vanity in case they were met with
among men beneath the Imperial level. And so far as the creation of this
form of "good-will" by this manner of advertising is traceable to such,
or equivalent, motives of a personal incidence, the provocation to
economy along this line would presumably not be a notable factor in the
case. And one returns perforce to the principle already spoken of above,
that the consumptive need of superfluities is indefinitely extensible,
with the resulting inference that nothing conclusive is to be said as to
the prospective magnitude of this item in the Imperial bill of expense,
or of the consequent pecuniary burdens which it would impose on the
underlying peoples.

* * * * *

So far the argument has run on the pecuniary incidence of this projected
Imperial dominion as it falls on the underlying community as a whole,
with no attempt to discriminate between the divergent interests of the
different classes and conditions of men that go to make up any modern
community. The question in hand is a question of pecuniary burdens, and
therefore of the pecuniary interests of these several distinguishable
classes or conditions of men. In all these modern nations that now stand
in the article of decision between peace by submission or a doubtful and
melancholy alternative,--in all of them men are by statute and custom
inviolably equal before the law, of course; they are ungraded and
masterless men before the law. But these same peoples are also alike in
the respect that pecuniary duties and obligations among them are
similarly sacred and inviolable under the dispassionate findings of the
law. This pecuniary equality is, in effect, an impersonal equality
between pecuniary magnitudes; from which it follows that these citizens
of the advanced nations are not ungraded men in the pecuniary respect;
nor are they masterless, in so far as a greater pecuniary force will
always, under this impersonal equality of the law, stand in a relation
of mastery toward a lesser one.

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