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

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The case of the English-speaking peoples, who have gone over this course
of experience in more consecutive fashion than any others, teaches that
in the long run, if these modern economic conditions persist, one or the
other or both of these creatures of the modern era must prevail, and
must put the dynastic establishment out of commission; although the
sequel has not yet been seen in this British case, and there is no
ground afforded for inference as to which of the two will have the
fortune to survive and be invested with the hegemony. Meantime the
opportunity of the Imperial establishment to push its enterprise in
dominion lies in the interval of time so required for the discipline of
experience under modern conditions to work out through the growth of
modern habits of thought into such modern (i.e. civilised) institutional
forms and such settled principles of personal insubordination as will
put any effectual dynastic establishment out of commission. The same
interval of time, that must so be allowed for the decay of the dynastic
spirit among the German people under the discipline of life by the
methods of modern trade and industry, marks the period during which no
peace compact will be practicable, except with the elimination of the
Imperial establishment as a possible warlike power. All this, of
course, applies to the case of Japan as well, with the difference that
while the Japanese people are farther in arrears, they are also a
smaller, less formidable body, more exposed to outside forces, and their
mediaevalism is of a more archaic and therefore more precarious type.

What length of time will be required for this decay of the dynastic
spirit among the people of the Empire is, of course, impossible to say.
The factors of the case are not of a character to admit anything like
calculation of the rate of movement; but in the nature of the factors
involved it is also contained that something of a movement in this
direction is unavoidable, under Providence. As a preliminary
consideration, these peoples of the Empire and its allies, as well as
their enemies in the great war, will necessarily come out of their
warlike experience in a more patriotic and more vindictive frame of mind
than that in which they entered on this adventure. Fighting makes for
malevolence. The war is itself to be counted as a set-back. A very large
proportion of those who have lived through it will necessarily carry a
warlike bent through life. By that much, whatever it may count for, the
decay of the dynastic spirit--or the growth of tolerance and equity in
national sentiment, if one chooses to put it that way--will be retarded
from beforehand. So also the Imperial establishment, or whatever is left
of it, may be counted on to do everything in its power to preserve the
popular spirit of loyalty and national animosity, by all means at its
disposal; since the Imperial establishment finally rests on the
effectual body of national animosity. What hindrance will come in from
this agency of retardation can at least vaguely be guessed at, in the
light of what has been accomplished in that way under the strenuously
reactionary rule of the present reign.

Again, there is the chance, as there always is a chance of human folly,
that the neighboring peoples will undertake, whether jointly or
severally, to restrict or prohibit trade relations between the people of
the Empire and their enemies in the present war; thereby fomenting
international animosity, as well as contributing directly to the
economic readiness for war both on their own part and on that of the
Empire. This is also, and in an eminent degree, an unknown factor in the
case, on which not even a reasonable guess can be made beforehand. These
are, all and several, reactionary agencies, factors of retardation,
making for continuation of the current international situation of
animosity, distrust, chicane, trade rivalry, competitive armament, and
eventual warlike enterprise.

* * * * *

To offset these agencies of conservatism there is nothing much that can
be counted on but that slow, random, and essentially insidious working
of habituation that tends to the obsolescence of the received
preconceptions; partly by supplanting them with something new, but more
effectually by their falling into disuse and decay. There is, it will
have to be admitted, little of a positive character that can be done
toward the installation of a regime of peace and good-will. The
endeavours of the pacifists should suffice to convince any dispassionate
observer of the substantial futility of creative efforts looking to such
an end. Much can doubtless be done in the way of precautionary measures,
mostly of a negative character, in the way especially of removing
sources of infection and (possibly) of so sterilising the apparatus of
national life that its working shall neither maintain animosities and
interests at variance with the conditions of peace nor contribute to
their spread and growth.

There is necessarily little hope or prospect that any national
establishment will contribute materially or in any direct way to the
obsolescence of warlike sentiments and ambitions; since such
establishments are designed for the making of war by keeping national
jealousies intact, and their accepted place in affairs is that of
preparation for eventual hostilities, defensive or offensive. Except for
the contingency of eventual hostilities, no national establishment could
be kept in countenance. They would all fall into the decay of desuetude,
just as has happened to the dynastic establishments among those peoples
who have (passably) lost the spirit of dynastic aggression.

The modern industrial occupations, the modern technology, and that
modern empirical science that runs so close to the frontiers of
technology, all work at cross purposes with the received preconceptions
of the nationalist order; and in a more pronounced degree they are at
cross purposes with that dynastic order of preconceptions that converges
on Imperial dominion. The like is true, with a difference, of the ways,
means and routine of business enterprise as it is conducted in the
commercialised communities of today. The working of these agencies runs
to this effect not by way of deliberate and destructive antagonism, but
almost wholly by force of systematic, though unintended and incidental,
neglect of those values, standards, verities, and grounds of
discrimination and conviction that make up the working realities of the
national spirit and of dynastic ambition. The working concepts of this
new, essentially mechanistic, order of human interests, do not
necessarily clash with those of the old order, essentially the order of
personages and personalities; the two are incommensurable, and they are
incompatible only in the sense and degree implied in that state of the
case. The profoundest and most meritorious truths of dynastic politics
can on no provocation and by no sleight of hand be brought within the
logic of that system of knowledge and appraisal of values by which the
mechanistic technology proceeds. Within the premises of this modern
mechanistic industry and science all the best values and verities of the
dynastic order are simply "incompetent, irrelevant and impertinent."

There is accordingly no unavoidable clash and no necessary friction
between the two schemes of knowledge or the two habits of mind that
characterise the two contrasted cultural eras. It is only that a given
individual--call him the common man--will not be occupied with both of
these incommensurable systems of logic and appreciation at the same time
or bearing on the same point; and further that in proportion as his
waking hours and his mental energy are fully occupied within the lines
of one of these systems of knowledge, design and employment, in much the
same measure he will necessarily neglect the other, and in time he will
lose proficiency and interest in its pursuits and its conclusions. The
man who is so held by his daily employment and his life-long attention
within the range of habits of thought that are valid in the mechanistic
technology, will, on an average and in the long run, lose his grip on
the spiritual virtues of national prestige and dynastic primacy; "for
they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they
are spiritually discerned."

Not that the adepts in this modern mechanistic system of knowledge and
design may not also be very good patriots and devoted servants of the
dynasty. The artless and, on the whole, spontaneous riot of dynastic
avidity displayed to the astonished eyes of their fellow craftsmen in
the neutral countries by the most eminent scientists of the Fatherland
during the early months of the war should be sufficient warning that the
archaic preconceptions do not hurriedly fly out of the window when the
habits of thought of the mechanistic order come in at the door. But with
the passage of time, pervasively, by imperceptible displacement, by the
decay of habitual disuse, as well as by habitual occupation with these
other and unrelated ways and means of knowledge and belief, dynastic
loyalty and the like conceptions in the realm of religion and magic pass
out of the field of attention and fall insensibly into the category of
the lost arts. Particularly will this be true of the common man, who
lives, somewhat characteristically, in the mass and in the present, and
whose waking hours are somewhat fully occupied with what he has to do.

With the commercial interests the Imperial establishment can probably
make such terms as to induce their support of the dynastic enterprise,
since they can apparently always be made to believe that an extension of
the Imperial dominion will bring correspondingly increased opportunities
of trade. It is doubtless a mistake, but it is commonly believed by the
interested parties, which is just as good for the purpose as if it were
true. And it should be added that in this, as in other instances of the
quest of larger markets, the costs are to be paid by someone else than
the presumed commercial beneficiaries; which brings the matter under the
dearest principle known to businessmen: that of getting something for
nothing. It will not be equally easy to keep the affections of the
common man loyal to the dynastic enterprise when he begins to lose his
grip on the archaic faith in dynastic dominion and comes to realise that
he has also--individually and in the mass--no material interest even in
the defense of the Fatherland, much less in the further extension of
Imperial rule.

But the time when this process of disillusionment and decay of ideals
shall have gone far enough among the common run to afford no secure
footing in popular sentiment for the contemplated Imperial
enterprise,--this time is doubtless far in the future, as compared with
the interval of preparation required for a new onset. Habituation takes
time, particularly such habituation as can be counted on to derange the
habitual bent of a great population in respect of their dearest
preconceptions. It will take a very appreciable space of time even in
the case of a populace so accessible to new habits of thought as the
German people are by virtue of their slight percentage of illiteracy,
the very large proportion engaged in those modern industries that
constantly require some intelligent insight into mechanistic facts, the
density of population and the adequate means of communication, and the
extent to which the whole population is caught in the web of
mechanically standardised processes that condition their daily life at
every turn. As regards their technological situation, and their exposure
to the discipline of industrial life, no other population of nearly the
same volume is placed in a position so conducive to a rapid acquirement
of the spirit of the modern era. But, also, no other people comparable
with the population of the Fatherland has so large and well-knit a body
of archaic preconceptions to unlearn. Their nearest analogue, of course,
is the Japanese nation.

In all this there is, of course, no inclination to cast a slur on the
German people. In point of racial characteristics there is no difference
between them and their neighbours. And there is no reason to question
their good intentions. Indeed, it may safely be asserted that no people
is more consciously well-meaning than the children of the Fatherland. It
is only that, with their archaic preconceptions of what is right and
meritorious, their best intentions spell malevolence when projected into
the civilised world as it stands today. And by no fault of theirs. Nor
is it meant to be intimated that their rate of approach to the accepted
Occidental standard of institutional maturity will be unduly slow or
unduly reluctant, so soon as the pertinent facts of modern life begin
effectively to shape their habits of thought. It is only that, human
nature--and human second nature--being what it always has been, the rate
of approach of the German people to a passably neutral complexion in
matters of international animosity and aggression must necessarily be
slow enough to allow ample time for the renewed preparation of a more
unsparing and redoubtable endeavour on the part of the Imperial
establishment.

What makes this German Imperial establishment redoubtable, beyond
comparison, is the very simple but also very grave combination of
circumstances whereby the German people have acquired the use of the
modern industrial arts in the highest state of efficiency, at the same
time that they have retained unabated the fanatical loyalty of feudal
barbarism.[9] So long, and in so far, as this conjunction of forces
holds there is no outlook for peace except on the elimination of
Germany as a power capable of disturbing the peace.

[Footnote 9: For an extended discussion of this point, see _Imperial
Germany and the Industrial Revolution_, especially ch. v. and vi.]

It may seem invidious to speak so recurrently of the German Imperial
establishment as the sole potential disturber of the peace in Europe.
The reason for so singling out the Empire for this invidious
distinction--of merit or demerit, as one may incline to take it--is that
the facts run that way. There is, of course, other human material, and
no small volume of it in the aggregate, that is of much the same
character, and serviceable for the same purposes as the resources and
man-power of the Empire. But this other material can come effectually
into bearing as a means of disturbance only in so far as it clusters
about the Imperial dynasty and marches under his banners. In so speaking
of the Imperial establishment as the sole enemy of a European peace,
therefore, these outlying others are taken for granted, very much as one
takes the nimbus for granted in speaking of one of the greater saints of
God.

* * * * *

So the argument returns to the alternative: Peace by unconditional
surrender and submission, or peace by elimination of Imperial Germany
(and Japan). There is no middle course apparent. The old-fashioned--that
is to say nineteenth-century--plan of competitive defensive armament and
a balance of powers has been tried, and it has not proved to be a
success, even so early in the twentieth century. This plan offers a
substitute (_Ersatz_) for peace; but even as such it has become
impracticable. The modern, or rather the current late-modern, state of
the industrial arts does not tolerate it. Technological knowledge has
thrown the advantage in military affairs definitively to the offensive,
particularly to the offensive that is prepared beforehand with the
suitable appliances and with men ready matured in that rigorous and
protracted training by which alone they can become competent to make
warlike use of these suitable appliances provided by the modern
technology. At the same time, and by grace of the same advance in
technology, any well-designed offensive can effectually reach any given
community, in spite of distance or of other natural obstacles. The era
of defensive armaments and diplomatic equilibration, as a substitute for
peace, has been definitively closed by the modern state of the
industrial arts.

Of the two alternatives spoken of above, the former--peace by submission
under an alien dynasty--is presumably not a practicable solution, as has
appeared in the course of the foregoing argument.

The modern nations are not spiritually ripe for it. Whether they have
reached even that stage of national sobriety, or neutrality, that would
enable them to live at peace among themselves after elimination of the
Imperial Powers is still open to an uneasy doubt. It would be by a
precarious margin that they can be counted on so to keep the peace in
the absence of provocation from without the pale. Their predilection for
peace goes to no greater lengths than is implied in the formula: Peace
with Honour; which assuredly does not cover a peace of non-resistance,
and which, in effect, leaves the distinction between an offensive and a
defensive war somewhat at loose ends. The national prestige is still a
live asset in the mind of these peoples; and the limit of tolerance in
respect of this patriotic animosity appears to be drawn appreciably
closer than the formula cited above would necessarily presume. They will
fight on provocation, and the degree of provocation required to upset
the serenity of these sportsmanlike modern peoples is a point on which
the shrewdest guesses may diverge. Still, opinion runs more and more
consistently to the effect that if these modern--say the French and the
English-speaking--peoples were left to their own devices the peace might
fairly be counted on to be kept between them indefinitely, barring
unforeseen contingencies.

Experience teaches that warlike enterprise on a moderate scale and as a
side interest is by no means incompatible with such a degree of neutral
animus as these peoples have yet acquired,--e.g., the Spanish-American
war, which was made in America, or the Boer war, which was made in
England. But these wars, in spite of the dimensions which they presently
took on, were after all of the nature of episodes,--the one chiefly an
extension of sportsmanship, which engaged the best attention of only the
more sportsmanlike elements, the other chiefly engineered by certain
business interests with a callous view to getting something for nothing.
Both episodes came to be serious enough, both in their immediate
incidence and in their consequences; but neither commanded the
deliberate and cordial support of the community at large. There is a
meretricious air over both; and there is apparent a popular inclination
to condone rather than to take pride in these _faits accomplis_. The one
excursion was a product of sportsmanlike bravado, fed on boyish
exuberance, fomented for mercenary objects by certain business interests
and place-hunting politicians, and incited by meretricious newspapers
with a view to increase their circulation. The other was set afoot by
interested businessmen, backed by politicians, seconded by newspapers,
and borne by the community at large, in great part under
misapprehension and stung by wounded pride.

Opinions will diverge widely as to the chances of peace in a community
of nations among whom episodes of this character, and of such
dimensions, have been somewhat more than tolerated in the immediate
past. But the consensus of opinion in these same countries appears to be
setting with fair consistency to the persuasion that the popular spirit
shown in these and in analogous conjunctures in the recent past gives
warrant that peace is deliberately desired and is likely to be
maintained, barring unforeseen contingencies.

* * * * *

In the large, the measures conducive to the perpetuation of peace, and
necessary to be taken, are simple and obvious; and they are largely of a
negative character, exploits of omission and neglect. Under modern
conditions, and barring aggression from without, the peace is kept by
avoiding the breaking of it. It does not break of itself,--in the
absence of such national establishments as are organised with the sole
ulterior view of warlike enterprise. A policy of peace is obviously a
policy of avoidance,--avoidance of offense and of occasion for
annoyance.

What is required to insure the maintenance of peace among pacific
nations is the neutralisation of all those human relations out of which
international grievances are wont to arise. And what is necessary to
assure a reasonable expectation of continued peace is the neutralisation
of so much of these relations as the patriotic self-conceit and
credulity of these peoples will permit. These two formulations are by no
means identical; indeed, the disparity between what could advantageously
be dispensed with in the way of national rights and pretensions, and
what the common run of modern patriots could be induced to relinquish,
is probably much larger than any sanguine person would like to believe.
It should be plain on slight reflection that the greater part, indeed
substantially the whole, of those material interests and demands that
now engage the policy of the nations, and that serve on occasion to set
them at variance, might be neutralised or relinquished out of hand,
without detriment to any one of the peoples concerned.

The greater part of these material interests over which the various
national establishments keep watch and hold pretensions are, in point of
historical derivation, a legacy from the princely politics of what is
called the "Mercantilist" period; and they are uniformly of the nature
of gratuitous interference or discrimination between the citizens of the
given nation and outsiders. Except (doubtfully) in the English case,
where mercantilist policies are commonly believed to have been adopted
directly for the benefit of the commercial interest, measures of this
nature are uniformly traceable to the endeavours of the crown and its
officers to strengthen the finances of the prince and give him an
advantage in warlike enterprise. They are kept up essentially for the
same eventual end of preparation for war. So, e.g., protective tariffs,
and the like discrimination in shipping, are still advocated as a means
of making the nation self-supporting, self-contained, self-sufficient;
with a view to readiness in the event of hostilities.

A nation is in no degree better off in time of peace for being
self-sufficient. In point of patent fact no nation can be industrially
self-sufficient except at the cost of foregoing some of the economic
advantages of that specialisation of industry which the modern state of
the industrial arts enforces. In time of peace there is no benefit
comes to the community at large from such restraint of trade with the
outside world, or to any class or section of the community except those
commercial concerns that are favored by the discrimination; and these
invariably gain their special advantage at the cost of their
compatriots. Discrimination in trade--export, import or shipping--has no
more beneficial effect when carried out publicly by the national
authorities than when effected surreptitiously and illegally by a
private conspiracy in restraint of trade within a group of interested
business concerns.

Hitherto the common man has found it difficult to divest himself of an
habitual delusion on this head, handed down out of the past and
inculcated by interested politicians, to the effect that in some
mysterious way he stands to gain by limiting his own opportunities. But
the neutralisation of international trade, or the abrogation of all
discrimination in trade, is the beginning of wisdom as touches the
perpetuation of peace. The first effect of such a neutral policy would
be wider and more intricately interlocking trade relations, coupled with
a further specialisation and mutual dependence of industry between the
several countries concerned; which would mean, in terms of international
comity, a lessened readiness for warlike operations all around.

It used to be an argument of the free-traders that the growth of
international commercial relations under a free-trade policy would
greatly conduce to a spirit of mutual understanding and forbearance
between the nations. There may or may not be something appreciable in
the contention; it has been doubted, and there is no considerable
evidence to be had in support of it. But what is more to the point is
the tangible fact that such specialisation of industry and consequent
industrial interdependence would leave all parties to this relation less
capable, materially and spiritually, to break off amicable relations. So
again, in time of peace and except with a view to eventual hostilities,
it would involve no loss, and presumably little pecuniary gain, to any
country, locality, town or class, if all merchant shipping were
registered indiscriminately under neutral colors and sailed under the
neutral no-man's flag, responsible indiscriminately to the courts where
they touched or where their business was transacted.

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