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

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The question in hand touches the behavior of the common man, taken in
the aggregate, in face of the quandary into which circumstances have led
him; since the question of what these modern peoples will do is after
all a question of what the common man in the aggregate will do, of his
own motion or by persuasion. His betters may be in a position to guide,
persuade, cajole, mislead, and victimise him; for among the many
singular conceits that beset the common man is the persuasion that his
betters are in some way better than he, wiser, more beneficent. But the
course that may so be chosen, with or without guidance or persuasion
from the superior classes, as well as the persistence and energy with
which this course is pursued, is conditioned on the frame of mind of the
common run.

Just what will be the nature and the concrete expression of these ideal
aspirations that move the common run is a matter of habitual
preconceptions; and habits of thought vary from one people to another
according to the diversity of experience to which they have been
exposed. Among the Western nations the national prestige has come to
seem worth while as an ulterior end, perhaps beyond all else that is
comprised in the secular scheme of things desirable to be had or to be
achieved. And in the apprehension of such of them as have best preserved
the habits of thought induced by a long experience in feudal subjection,
the service of the sovereign or the dynasty still stands over as the
substantial core of the cultural scheme, upon which sentiment and
endeavour converge. In the past ages of the democratic peoples, as well
as in the present-day use and wont among subjects of the dynastic
States--as e.g., Japan or Germany--men are known to have resolutely
risked, and lost, their life for the sake of the sovereign's renown, or
even to save the sovereign's life; whereas, of course, even the
slightest and most nebulous reflection would make it manifest that in
point of net material utility the sovereign's decease is an idle matter
as compared with the loss of an able-bodied workman. The sovereign may
always be replaced, with some prospect of public advantage, or failing
that, it should be remarked that a regency or inter-regnum will commonly
be a season of relatively economical administration. Again, religious
enthusiasm, and the furtherance of religious propaganda, may come to
serve the same general purpose as these secular ideals, and will perhaps
serve it just as well. Certain "principles," of personal liberty and of
opportunity for creative self-direction and an intellectually worthy
life, perhaps may also become the idols of the people, for which they
will then be willing to risk their material fortune; and where this has
happened, as among the democratic peoples of Christendom, it is not
selfishly for their own personal opportunity to live untroubled under
the light of these high principles that these opinionated men are ready
to contend, but rather impersonally for the human right which under
these principles is the due of all mankind, and particularly of the
incoming and of later generations.

On these and the like intangible ends the common man is set with such
inveterate predilection that he will, on provocation, stick at nothing
to put the project through. For such like ends the common man will lay
down his life; at least, so they say. There may always be something of
rhetorical affectation in it all; but, after all, there is sufficient
evidence to hand of such substance and tenacity in the common man's hold
on these ideal aspirations, on these idols of his human spirit, as to
warrant the assertion that he is, rather commonly, prepared to go to
greater lengths in the furtherance of these immaterial gains that are to
inure to someone else than for any personal end of his own, in the way
of creature comforts or even of personal renown.

For such ends the common man, in democratic Christendom is, on
provocation, willing to die; or again, the patient and perhaps more
far-seeing common man of pagan China is willing to live for these idols
of an inveterate fancy, through endless contumely and hard usage. The
conventional Chinese preconceptions, in the way of things that are worth
while in their own right, appear to differ from those current in the
Occident in such a way that the preconceived ideal is not to be realised
except by way of continued life. The common man's accountability to the
cause of humanity, in China, is of so intimately personal a character
that he can meet it only by tenaciously holding his place in the
sequence of generations; whereas among the peoples of Christendom there
has arisen out of their contentious past a preconception to the effect
that this human duty to mankind is of the nature of a debt, which can be
cancelled by bankruptcy proceedings, so that the man who unprofitably
dies fighting for the cause has thereby constructively paid the
reckoning in full.

Evidently, if the common man of these modern nations that are
prospectively to be brought under tutelage of the Imperial government
could be brought to the frame of mind that is habitual with his Chinese
counterpart, there should be a fair hope that pacific counsels would
prevail and that Christendom would so come in for a regime of peace by
submission under this Imperial tutelage. But there are always these
preconceptions of self-will and insubordination to be counted with
among these nations, and there is the ancient habit of a contentious
national solidarity in defense of the nation's prestige, more urgent
among these peoples than any sentiment of solidarity with mankind at
large, or any ulterior gain in civilisation that might come of continued
discipline in the virtues of patience and diligence under distasteful
circumstances.

The occidental conception of manhood is in some considerable measure
drawn in negative terms. So much so that whenever a question of the
manly virtues comes under controversy it presently appears that at least
the indispensable minimum, and indeed the ordinary marginal modicum, of
what is requisite to a worthy manner of life is habitually formulated in
terms of what not. This appearance is doubtless misleading if taken
without the universally understood postulate on the basis of which
negative demands are formulated. There is a good deal of what would be
called historical accident in all this. The indispensable demands of
this modern manhood take the form of refusal to obey extraneous
authority on compulsion; of exemption from coercive direction and
subservience; of insubordination, in short. But it is always understood
as a matter of course that this insubordination is a refusal to submit
to irresponsible or autocratic rule. Stated from the positive side it
would be freedom from restraint by or obedience to any authority not
constituted by express advice and consent of the governed. And as near
as it may be formulated, when reduced to the irreducible minimum of
concrete proviso, this is the final substance of things which neither
shame nor honour will permit the modern civilised man to yield. To no
arrangement for the abrogation of this minimum of free initiative and
self-direction will he consent to be a party, whether it touches the
conditions of life for his own people who are to come after, or as
touches the fortunes of such aliens as are of a like mind on this head
and are unable to make head against invasion of these human rights from
outside.

As has just been remarked, the negative form so often taken by these
demands is something of an historical accident, due to the fact that
these modern peoples came into their highly esteemed system of Natural
Liberty out of an earlier system of positive checks on self-direction
and initiative; a system, in effect, very much after the fashion of that
Imperial jurisdiction that still prevails in the dynastic States--as,
e.g., Germany or Japan--whose projected dominion is now the immediate
object of apprehension and repugnance. How naively the negative
formulation gained acceptance, and at the same time how intrinsic to the
new dispensation was the aspiration for free initiative, appears in the
confident assertion of its most genial spokesman, that when these
positive checks are taken away, "The simple and obvious system of
Natural Liberty establishes itself of its own accord."

The common man, in these modern communities, shows a brittle temper when
any overt move is made against this heritage of civil liberty. He may
not be altogether well advised in respect of what liberties he will
defend and what he will submit to; but the fact is to be counted with in
any projected peace, that there is always this refractory residue of
terms not open to negotiation or compromise. Now it also happens, also
by historical accident, that these residual principles of civil liberty
have come to blend and coalesce with a stubborn preconception of
national integrity and national prestige. So that in the workday
apprehension of the common man, not given to analytic excursions, any
infraction of the national integrity or any abatement of the national
prestige has come to figure as an insufferable infringement on his
personal liberty and on those principles of humanity that make up the
categorical articles of the secular creed of Christendom. The fact may
be patent on reflection that the common man's substantial interest in
the national integrity is slight and elusive, and that in sober common
sense the national prestige has something less than a neutral value to
him; but this state of the substantially pertinent facts is not greatly
of the essence of the case, since his preconceptions in these premises
do not run to that effect, and since they are of too hard and fast a
texture to suffer any serious abatement within such a space of time as
can come in question here and now.

* * * * *

The outlook for a speedy settlement of the world's peace on a plan of
unconditional surrender to the projected Imperial dominion seems
unpromisingly dubious, in view of the stubborn temper shown by these
modern peoples wherever their preconceived ideas of right and honest
living appear to be in jeopardy; and the expediency of entering into any
negotiated compact of diplomatic engagements and assurances designed to
serve as groundwork to an eventual enterprise of that kind must
therefore also be questionable in a high degree. It is even doubtful if
any allowance of time can be counted on to bring these modern peoples to
a more reasonable, more worldly-wise, frame of mind; so that they would
come to see their interest in such an arrangement, or would divest
themselves of their present stubborn and perhaps fantastic prejudice
against an autocratic regime of the kind spoken for. At least for the
present any such hope of a peaceable settlement seems illusive. What
may be practicable in this way in the course of time is of course still
more obscure; but argument on the premises which the present affords
does not point to a substantially different outcome in the calculable
future.

For the immediate future--say, within the life-time of the oncoming
generation--the spiritual state of the peoples concerned in this
international quandary is not likely to undergo so radical a change as
to seriously invalidate an argument that proceeds on the present lie of
the land in this respect. Preconceptions are a work of habit impinging
on a given temperamental bent; and where, as in these premises, the
preconceptions have taken on an institutionalised form, have become
conventionalised and commonly accepted, and so have been woven into the
texture of popular common sense, they must needs be a work of protracted
and comprehensive habituation impinging on a popular temperamental bent
of so general a prevalence that it may be called congenital to the
community at large. A heritable bent pervading the group within which
inheritance runs, does not change, so long as the racial complexion of
the group remains passably intact; a conventionalised, commonly
established habit of mind will change only slowly, commonly not without
the passing of at least one generation, and only by grace of a
sufficiently searching and comprehensive discipline of experience. For
good or ill, the current situation is to be counted on not to lose
character over night or with a revolution of the seasons, so far as
concerns these spiritual factors that make or mar the fortunes of
nations.

At the same time these spiritual assets, being of the nature of habit,
are also bound to change character more or less radically, by insensible
shifting of ground, but incontinently,--provided only that the
conditions of life, and therefore the discipline of experience, undergo
any substantial change. So the immediate interest shifts to the
presumptive rate and character of those changes that are in prospect,
due to the unremitting change of circumstances under which these modern
peoples live and to the discipline of which they are unavoidably
exposed. For the present and for the immediate future the current state
of things is a sufficiently stable basis of argument; but assurance as
to the sufficiency of the premises afforded by the current state of
things thins out in proportion as the perspective of the argument runs
out into the succeeding years. The bearing of it all is two-fold, of
course. This progressive, cumulative habituation under changing
circumstances affects the case both of those democratic peoples whose
fortunes are in the hazard, and also of those dynastic States by whom
the projected enterprise in dominion is to be carried into effect.

* * * * *

The case of the two formidable dynastic States whose names have been
coupled together in what has already been said is perhaps the more
immediately interesting in the present connection. As matters stand, and
in the measure in which they continue so to stand, the case of these is
in no degree equivocal. The two dynastic establishments seek dominion,
and indeed they seek nothing else, except incidentally to and in
furtherance of the main quest. As has been remarked before, it lies in
the nature of a dynastic State to seek dominion, that being the whole of
its nature in so far as it runs true to form. But a dynastic State, like
any other settled, institutionalised community of men, rests on and
draws its effectual driving force from the habit of mind of its
underlying community, the common man in the aggregate, his
preconceptions and ideals as to what things are worth while. Without a
suitable spiritual ground of this kind such a dynastic State passes out
of the category of formidable Powers and into that of precarious
despotism.

In both of the two States here in question the dynastic establishment
and its bodyguard of officials and gentlefolk may be counted on to
persevere in the faith that now animates them, until an uneasy
displacement of sentiment among the underlying populace may in time
induce them judiciously to shift their footing. Like the ruling classes
elsewhere, they are of a conservative temper and may be counted on so to
continue. They are also not greatly exposed to the discipline of
experience that makes for adaptive change in habits of life, and
therefore in the correlated habits of thought. It is always the common
man that is effectually reached by any exacting or wide-reaching change
in the conditions of life. He is relatively unsheltered from any forces
that make for adaptive change, as contrasted with the case of his
betters; and however sluggish and reluctant may be his response to such
discipline as makes for a displacement of outworn preconceptions, yet it
is always out of the mass of this common humanity that those movements
of disaffection and protest arise, which lead, on occasion, to any
material realignment of the institutional fabric or to any substantial
shift in the line of policy to be pursued under the guidance of their
betters.

The common mass of humanity, it may be said in parenthesis, is of course
not a homogeneous body. Uncommon men, in point of native gifts of
intelligence, sensibility, or personal force, will occur as frequently,
in proportion to the aggregate numbers, among the common mass as among
their betters. Since in any one of these nations of Christendom, with
their all-inclusive hybridisation, the range, frequency and amplitude of
variations in hereditary endowment is the same throughout all classes.
Class differentiation is a matter of habit and convention; and in
distinction from his betters the common man is common only in point of
numbers and in point of the more general and more exacting conditions to
which he is exposed. He is in a position to be more hardly ridden by the
discipline of experience, and is at the same time held more consistently
to such a body of preconceptions, and to such changes only in this body
of preconceptions, as fall in with the drift of things in a larger mass
of humanity. But all the while it is the discipline which impinges on
the sensibilities of this common mass that shapes the spiritual attitude
and temper of the community and so defines what may and what may not be
undertaken by the constituted leaders. So that, in a way, these dynastic
States are at the mercy of that popular sentiment whose creatures they
are, and are subject to undesired changes of direction and efficiency in
their endeavors, contingent on changes in the popular temper; over which
they have only a partial, and on the whole a superficial control.

A relatively powerful control and energetic direction of the popular
temper is and has been exercised by these dynastic establishments, with
a view to its utilisation in the pursuit of the dynastic enterprise; and
much has visibly been accomplished in that way; chiefly, perhaps, by
military discipline in subordination to personal authority, and also by
an unsparing surveillance of popular education, with a view to fortify
the preconceptions handed down from the passing order as well as to
eliminate all subversive innovation. Yet in spite of all the
well-conceived and shrewdly managed endeavors of the German Imperial
system in this direction, e.g., there has been evidence of an obscurely
growing uneasiness, not to say disaffection, among the underlying mass.
So much so that hasty observers, and perhaps biased, have reached the
inference that one of the immediate contributory causes that led to the
present war was the need of a heroic remedy to correct this untoward
drift of sentiment.

For the German people the government of the present dynastic incumbent
has done all that could (humanly speaking) be expected in the way of
endeavoring to conserve the passing order and to hold the popular
imagination to the received feudalistic ideals of loyal service. And yet
the peoples of the Empire are already caught in the net of that newer
order which they are now endeavoring to break by force of arms. They are
inextricably implicated in the cultural complex of Christendom; and
within this Western culture those peoples to whom it fell to lead the
exodus out of the Egypt of feudalism have come quite naturally to set
the pace in all the larger conformities of civilised life. Within the
confines of Christendom today, for good or ill, whatever usage or
customary rule of conduct falls visibly short of the precedent set by
these cultural pioneers is felt to fall beneath the prescriptive
commonplace level of civilisation. Failure to adopt and make use of
those tried institutional expedients on which these peoples of the
advance guard have set their mark of authentication is today
presumptively a mistake and an advantage foregone; and a people who are
denied the benefit of these latterday ways and means of civic life are
uneasy with a sense of grievance at the hands of their rulers. Besides
which, the fashion in articles of institutional equipage so set by the
authentic pioneers of culture has also come to be mandatory, as a
punctilio of the governmental proprieties; so that no national
establishment which aspires to a decorous appearance in the eyes of the
civilised world can longer afford to be seen without them. The forms at
least must be observed. Hence the "representative" and
pseudo-representative institutions of these dynastic States.

These dynastic States among the rest have partly followed the dictates
of civilised fashion, partly yielded to the, more or less intelligent,
solicitations of their subjects, or the spokesmen of their subjects, and
have installed institutional apparatus of this modern pattern--more in
point of form than of substance, perhaps. Yet in time the adoption of
the forms is likely to have an effect, if changing circumstances favor
their taking effect. Such has on the whole been the experience of those
peoples who have gone before along this trail of political advance. As
instance the growth of discretionary powers under the hands of
parliamentary representatives in those cases where the movement has gone
on longest and farthest; and these instances should not be considered
idle, as intimations of what may presumptively be looked for under the
Imperial establishments of Germany or Japan. It may be true that
hitherto, along with the really considerable volume of imitative
gestures of discretionary deliberation delegated to these parliamentary
bodies, they have as regards all graver matters brought to their notice
only been charged with a (limited) power to talk. It may be true that,
for the present, on critical or weighty measures the parliamentary
discretion extends no farther than respectfully to say: "_Ja wohl_!" But
then, _Ja wohl_ is also something; and there is no telling where it may
all lead to in the long course of years. One has a vague apprehension
that this "_Ja wohl_!" may some day come to be a customarily necessary
form of authentication, so that with-holding it (_Behuet' es Gott_!) may
even come to count as an effectual veto on measures so pointedly
neglected. More particularly will the formalities of representation and
self-government be likely to draw the substance of such like "free
institutions" into the effectual conduct of public affairs if it turns
out that the workday experiences of these people takes a turn more
conducive to habits of insubordination than has been the case hitherto.

Indications are, again, not wanting, that even in the Empire the
discipline of workday experience is already diverging from that line
that once trained the German subjects into the most loyal and unrepining
subservience to dynastic ambitions. Of course, just now, under the
shattering impact of warlike atrocities and patriotic clamour, the
workday spirit of insubordination and critical scrutiny is gone out of
sight and out of hearing.

Something of this inchoate insubordination has showed itself repeatedly
during the present reign, sufficient to provoke many shrewd protective
measures on the side of the dynastic establishment, both by way of
political strategy and by arbitrary control. Disregarding many minor and
inconsequential divisions of opinion and counsel among the German people
during this eventful reign, the political situation has been moving on
the play of three, incipiently divergent, strains of interest and
sentiment: (a) the dynasty (together with the Agrarians, of whom in a
sense the dynasty is a part); (b) the businessmen, or commercial
interest (including investors); and (c) the industrial workmen.
Doubtless it would be easier to overstate than to indicate with any nice
precision what has been the nature, and especially the degree, of this
alienation of sentiment and divergence of conscious interest among these
several elements. It is not that there has at any point been a
perceptible faltering in respect of loyalty to the crown as such. But
since the crown belongs, by origin, tradition, interest and spiritual
identity, in the camp of the Agrarians, the situation has been such as
would inevitably take on a character of disaffection toward the dynastic
establishment, in the conceivable absence of that strong surviving
sentiment of dynastic loyalty that still animates all classes and
conditions of men in the Fatherland. It would accordingly, again, be an
overstatement to say that the crown has been standing precariously at
the apex of a political triangle, the other two corners of which are
occupied by these two divided and potentially recalcitrant elements of
the body politic, held apart by class antipathy and divergent pecuniary
interest, and held in check by divided counsels; but something after
that fashion is what would have resulted under similar conditions of
strain in any community where the modern spirit of insubordination has
taken effect in any large measure.

Both of these elements of incipient disturbance in the dynastic economy,
the modern commercial and working classes, are creatures of the new era;
and they are systematically out of line with the received dynastic
tradition of fealty, both in respect of their pecuniary interests and in
respect of that discipline of experience to which their workday
employment subjects them. They are substantially the same two classes or
groupings that came forward in the modernisation of the British
community, with a gradual segregation of interest and a consequent
induced solidarity of class sentiment and class animosities. But with
the difference that in the British case the movement of changing
circumstances was slow enough to allow a fair degree of habituation to
the altered economic conditions; whereas in the German case the move
into modern economic conditions has been made so precipitately as to
have carried the mediaeval frame of mind over virtually intact into this
era of large business and machine industry. In the Fatherland the
commercial and industrial classes have been called on to play their part
without time to learn their lines.

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