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

T >> Thorstein Veblen >> An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27

The purpose of the projected league is peace and security, commonly
spoken of under patriotic preconceptions as "national" peace and
security. This will have to mean a competent enforcement of peace, on
such a footing of overmastering force at the disposal of the associated
pacific nations as to make security a matter of ordinary routine. It is
true, the more genial spokesmen of the project are given to the view
that what is to come of it all is a comity of neutral nations, amicably
adjusting their own relations among themselves in a spirit of peace and
good-will. But this view is over-sanguine, in that it overlooks the
point that into this prospective comity of nations Imperial Germany (and
Imperial Japan) fit like a drunken savage with a machine gun. It also
overlooks the patent fatality that these two are bound to come into a
coalition at the next turn, with whatever outside and subsidiary
resources they can draw on; provided only that a reasonable opening for
further enterprise presents itself. The league, in other terms, must be
in a position to enforce peace by overmastering force, and to anticipate
any move at cross purposes with the security of the pacific nations.

This end can be reached by either one of two ways. If the dynastic
States are left to their own devices, it will be incumbent on the
associated nations to put in the field a standing force sufficient to
prevent a recourse to arms; which means competitive armament and
universal military rule. Or the dynastic States may be taken into
partnership and placed under such surveillance and constraint as to
practically disarm them; which would admit virtual disarmament of the
federated nations. The former arrangement has nothing in its favour,
except the possibility that no better or less irksome arrangement can be
had under existing circumstances; that is to say that the pacific
nations may not be able to bring these dynastic states to terms of
disarmament under surveillance. They assuredly can not except by force;
and this is the precise point on which the continued hostilities in
Europe turn today. In diplomatic parable the German Imperial spokesmen
say that they can accept (or as they prefer to phrase it, grant) no
terms that do not fully safeguard the Future of the Fatherland; and in
similarly diplomatic parable the spokesmen of the Entente insist that
Prussian militarism must be permanently put out of commission; but it
all means the same thing, viz. that the Imperial establishment is to be
(or is not to be) disabled beyond the possibility of its entering on a
similar warlike enterprise again, when it has had time for recuperation.
The dynastic statesmen, and the lay subjects of the Imperial
establishment, are strenuously set on securing a fair opportunity for
recuperation and a wiser endeavour to achieve that dominion which the
present adventure promises to defeat; while the Entente want no
recurrence, and are persuaded that a recurrence can be avoided only on
the footing of a present collapse of the Imperial power and a
scrupulously enforced prostration of it henceforth.

Without the definitive collapse of the Imperial power no pacific league
of nations can come to anything much more than armistice. On the basis
of such a collapse the league may as well administer its affairs
economically by way of an all-around reduction of armaments, as by the
costlier and more irksome way of "preparedness." But a sensible
reduction of armaments on the part of the neutral nations implies
disarmament of the dynastic States. Which would involve a neutral
surveillance of the affairs of these dynastic States in such detail and
with such exercise of authority as would reduce their governments to the
effective status of local administrative officials. Out of which, in
turn, would arise complications that would lead to necessary
readjustments all along the line. It would involve the virtual, if not
also the formal, abolition of the monarchy, since the monarchy has no
other use than that of international war and intrigue; or at least it
would involve the virtual abrogation of its powers, reducing it to the
same status of _faineantise_ as now characterises the British crown.
Evidently this means a serious intermeddling in the domestic concerns
and arrangements of the Fatherland, such as is not admissible under the
democratic principle that any people must be left free to follow their
own inclinations and devices in their own concerns; at the same time
that this degree of interference is imperative if the peace is to be
kept on any other footing than that of eternal vigilance and superior
armed force, with a people whose own inclinations and devices are of the
kind now grown familiar in the German case,--all of which also applies,
with accentuation, in the case of Imperial Japan.

* * * * *

Some such policy of neutral surveillance in the affairs of these peoples
whose pacific temper is under suspicion, is necessarily involved in a
plan to enforce peace by concert of the pacific nations, and it will
necessarily carry implications and farther issues, touching not only
these supposedly recalcitrant peoples, but also as regards the pacific
nations themselves. Assuming always that the prime purpose and
consistent aim of the projected league is the peace and security of
those pacific nations on whose initiative it is to be achieved, then it
should be reasonable to assume that the course of procedure in its
organisation, administration and further adaptations and adjustments
must follow the logic of necessities leading to that end. He who wills
the end must make up his account with the means.

The end in this case is peace and security; which means, for practical
purposes, peace and good-will. Ill-will is not a secure foundation of
peace. Even the military strategists of the Imperial establishment
recommend a programme of "frightfulness" only as a convenient military
expedient, essentially a provisional basis of tranquility. In the long
run and as a permanent peace measure it is doubtless not to the point.
Security is finally to be had among or between modern peoples only on
the ground of a common understanding and an impartially common basis of
equity, or something approaching that basis as nearly as circumstances
will permit. Which means that in so far as the projected peace-compact
is to take effect in any enduring way, and leave the federated nations
some degree of freedom from persistent apprehension and animosity, as
well as from habitual insecurity of life and limb, the league must not
only be all-inclusive, but it must be inclusively uniform in all its
requirements and regulations.

The peoples of the quondam Imperial nations must come into the league on
a footing of formal equality with the rest. This they can not do without
the virtual abdication of their dynastic governmental establishments and
a consequent shift to a democratic form of organisation, and a formal
abrogation of class privileges and prerogatives.

However, a virtual abdication or cancelment of the dynastic rule, such
as to bring it formally into the same class with the British crown,
would scarcely meet the requirements in the case of the German Imperial
establishment; still more patently not in the case of Imperial Japan.
If, following the outlines of the decayed British crown, one or the
other of these Imperial establishments were by formal enactment reduced
to a state of nominal desuetude, the effect would be very appreciably
different from what happens in the British community, where the crown
has lost its powers by failure of the requisite subordination on the
part of the people, and not by a formal abdication of rights. In the
German case, and even more in the Japanese case, the strength of the
Imperial establishment lies in the unimpaired loyalty of the populace;
which would remain nearly intact at the outset, and would thin out only
by insensible degrees in the sequel; so that if only the Imperial
establishment were left formally standing it would command the fealty of
the common run in spite of any formal abrogation of its powers, and the
course of things would, in effect, run as before the break. In effect,
to bring about a shift to a democratic basis the dynastic slate would
have to be wiped very clean indeed. And this shift would be
indispensable to the successful conduct of such a pacific league of
nations, since any other than an effectually democratic national
establishment is to be counted on unfailingly to intrigue for dynastic
aggrandizement, through good report and evil.

In a case like that of Imperial Germany, with its federated States and
subsidiaries, where royalty and nobility still are potent preconceptions
investing the popular imagination, and where loyal abnegation in the
presence of authority still is the chief and staple virtue of the common
man,--in all such cases virtual abdication of the dynastic initiative
under constitutional forms can be had only by a formal and scrupulously
complete abrogation of all those legal and customary arrangements on
which this irresponsible exercise of authority has rested and through
which it has taken effect. Neutralisation in these instances will mean
reduction to an unqualified democratic footing; which will, at least at
the outset, not be acceptable to the common people, and will be wholly
intolerable to the ruling classes. Such a regime, therefore, while it is
indispensable as a working basis for a neutral league of peace, would
from the outset have to be enforced against the most desperate
resistance of the ruling classes, headed by the dynastic statesmen and
warlords, and backed by the stubborn loyalty of the subject populace. It
would have to mean the end of things for the ruling classes and the most
distasteful submission to an alien scheme of use and wont for the
populace. And yet it is also an indispensable element in any scheme of
pacification that aims at permanent peace and security. In time, it may
well be believed, the people of the Fatherland might learn to do well
enough without the gratuitous domination of their ruling classes, but at
the outset it would be a heartfelt privation.

It follows that a league to enforce peace would have to begin its regime
with enforcing peace on terms of the unconditional surrender of the
formidable warlike nations; which could be accomplished only by the
absolute and irretrievable defeat of these Powers as they now stand. The
question will, no doubt, present itself, Is the end worth the cost? That
question can, of course, not be answered in absolute terms, inasmuch as
it resolves itself into a question of taste and prepossession. An answer
to it would also not be greatly to the purpose here, since it would have
no particular bearing on the course of action likely to be pursued by
these pacific nations in their quest of a settled peace. It is more to
the point to ask what is likely to be the practical decision of these
peoples on that head when the question finally presents itself in a
concrete form.

Again it is necessary to call to mind that any momentous innovation
which rests on popular sentiment will take time; that consequently
anything like a plebiscite on the question today would scarcely give a
safe index of what the decision is likely to be when presently put to
the test; and that as things go just now, swiftly and urgent, any
time-allowance counts at something more than its ordinary workday
coefficient. What can apparently be said with some degree of confidence
is that just now, during these two years past, sentiment has been moving
in the direction indicated, and that any growing inclination of the kind
is being strongly reenforced by a growing realisation that nothing but
heroic remedies will avail at this juncture. If it comes to be currently
recognised that a settled peace can be had only at the cost of
eradicating privilege and royalty from the warlike nations, it would
seem reasonable to expect, from their present state of mind, that the
pacific nations will scarcely hesitate to apply that remedy,--provided
always that the fortunes of war fall out as that measure would require,
and provided also that the conflict lasts long enough and severe enough
to let them make up their mind to anything so drastic.

* * * * *

There is a certain side issue bearing on this question of the ulterior
probabilities of popular sentiment and national policy as to what is to
be done with the warlike nations in the event that the allied nations
who fight for neutrality have the disposal of such matters. This side
issue may seem remote, and it may not unlikely be overlooked among the
mass of graver and more tangible considerations. It was remarked above
that the United Kingdom is one of the two chief pillars of the projected
house of peace; and it may be added without serious fear of
contradiction or annoyance that the United Kingdom is also the one among
these pacific nations that comes nearest being capable, in the event of
such an emergency, to take care of its own case single-handed. For
better or worse, British adhesion to the project is indispensable, and
the British are in a position virtually to name their own terms of
adhesion. The British commonwealth--a very inclusive phrase in this
connection--must form the core of the pacific league, if any, and
British sentiment will have a very great place in the terms of its
formation and in the terms which it will be inclined to offer the
Imperial coalition at the settlement.

Now, it happens that the British community entered on this war as a
democratic monarchy ruled and officered by a body of gentlemen--doubtless
the most correct and admirable muster of gentlemen, of anything approaching
its volume, that the modern world can show. But the war has turned out not
to be a gentlemen's war. It has on the contrary been a war of technological
exploits, reenforced with all the beastly devices of the heathen. It is a
war in which all the specific traits of the well-bred and gently-minded man
are a handicap; in which veracity, gallantry, humanity, liberality are
conducive to nothing but defeat and humiliation. The death-rate among the
British gentlemen-officers in the early months, and for many months, ran
extravagantly high, for the most part because they were gallant
gentlemen as well as officers imbued with the good, old class spirit of
_noblesse oblige_, that has made half the tradition and more than half
the working theory of the British officer in the field,--good, but old,
hopelessly out of date. That generation of officers died, for the most
part; being unfit to survive or to serve the purpose under these modern
conditions of warfare, to which their enemy on the other hand had
adapted themselves with easy facility from beforehand. The gentlemanly
qualifications, and the material apparatus of gentility, and, it will
perhaps have to be admitted, the gentlemen, have fallen into the
background, or perhaps rather have measurably fallen into abeyance,
among the officers of the line. There may be more doubt as to the state
of things in respect of the gentility of the staff, but the best that
can confidently be said is that it is a point in doubt.

It is hoped that one may say without offense that in the course of time
the personnel has apparently worked down to the level of vulgarity
defined by the ways and means of this modern warfare; which means the
level on which runs a familiar acquaintance with large and complex
mechanical apparatus, railway and highway transport and power,
reenforced concrete, excavations and mud, more particularly mud,
concealment and ambush, and unlimited deceit and ferocity. It is not
precisely that persons of pedigree and gentle breeding have ceased to
enter or seek entrance to employment as officers, still less that
measures have been taken to restrain their doing so or to eliminate from
the service those who have come into it--though there may present itself
a doubt on this point as touches the more responsible discretionary
positions--but only that the stock of suitable gentlemen, uncommonly
large as it is, has been overdrawn; that those who have latterly gone
into service, or stayed in, have perforce divested themselves of their
gentility in some appreciable measure, particularly as regards class
distinction, and have fallen on their feet in the more commonplace role
of common men.

Serviceability in this modern warfare is conditioned on much the same
traits of temperament and training that make for usefulness in the
modern industrial processes, where large-scale coordinations of movement
and an effective familiarity with precise and far-reaching mechanical
processes is an indispensable requirement,--indispensable in the same
measure as the efficient conduct of this modern machine industry is
indispensable. But the British gentleman, in so far as he runs true to
type, is of no use to modern industry; quite the contrary, in fact.
Still, the British gentleman is, in point of heredity, the same thing
over again as the British common man; so that, barring the misdirected
training that makes him a gentleman, and which can largely be undone
under urgent need and pressure, he can be made serviceable for such uses
as the modern warfare requires. Meantime the very large demand for
officers, and the insatiable demand for capable officers, has brought
the experienced and capable common man into the case and is in a fair
way to discredit gentility as a necessary qualification of field
officers.

But the same process of discredit and elimination is also extending to
the responsible officials who have the administration of things in hand.
Indeed, the course of vulgarisation among the responsible officials has
now been under way for some appreciable time and with very perceptible
effect, and the rate of displacement appears to be gathering velocity
with every month that passes. Here, as in the field operations, it also
appears that gentlemanly methods, standards, preconceptions, and
knowledge of men and things, is no longer to the purpose. Here, too, it
is increasingly evident that this is not a gentlemen's war. And the
traditional qualifications that have sufficed in the past, at least to
the extent of enabling the British management to "muddle through," as
they are proudly in the habit of saying,--these qualifications are of
slight account in this technological conjuncture of the nation's
fortunes. It would perhaps be an under-statement to say that these
gentlemanly qualifications are no longer of any account, for the purpose
immediately in hand, and it would doubtless not do to say that they are
wholly and unreservedly disserviceable as things run today; but captious
critics might find at least a precarious footing of argument on such a
proposition.

Through the course of the nineteenth century the British government had
progressively been taking on the complexion of a "gentlemen's
agreement;" a government by gentlemen, for gentlemen, and of gentlemen,
too, beyond what could well be alleged in any other known instance,
though never wholly so. No government could be a government of gentlemen
exclusively, since there is no pecuniary profit in gentlemen as such,
and therefore no object in governing them; more particularly could there
never be any incentive in it for gentlemen, whose livelihood is, in the
nature of the case, drawn from some one else. A gentlemen's government
can escape death by inanition only in so far as it serves the material
interest of its class, as contrasted with the underlying population from
which the class draws its livelihood. This British arrangement of a
government by prudent and humane gentlemen with a view to the
conservation of that state of things that best conduced to the material
well-being of their own class, has on the whole had the loyal support of
the underlying populace, with an occasional floundering protest. But
the protest has never taken the shape of an expressed distrust of
gentlemen, considered as the staple ways and means of government; nor
has the direction of affairs ever descended into the hands of any other
or lower class or condition of men.

On the whole, this British arrangement for the control of national
affairs by a body of interested gentlemen-investors has been, and
perhaps still is, just as well at home in the affectionate
preconceptions of the nineteenth-century British as the corresponding
German usufruct by self-appointed swaggering aristocrats has been among
the underlying German population, or as the American arrangement of
national control by business men for business ends. The British and the
American arrangements run very much to the same substantial effect, of
course, inasmuch as the British gentlemen represent, as a class, the
filial generations of a business community, and their aims and standards
of conduct continue to be such as are enforced by the pecuniary
interests on which their gentility is conditioned. They continue to draw
the ways and means of a worthy life from businesslike arrangements of a
"vested" character, made and provided with a view to their nourishment
and repose. Their resulting usufruct of the community's productive
efforts rests on a vested interest of a pecuniary sort, sanctioned by
the sacred rights of property; very much as the analogous German
dynastic and aristocratic usufruct rests on personal prerogative,
sanctioned by the sacred rights of authentic prescription, without
afterthought. The two, it will be noted are very much alike, in effect,
"under the skin." The great distinguishing mark being that the German
usufructuary gentlemen are, in theory at least, gentlemen-adventurers of
prowess and proud words, whose place in the world's economy it is to
glorify God and disturb the peace; whereas their British analogues are
gentlemen-investors, of blameless propriety, whose place it is more
simply to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

All this arrangement of a usufruct with a view to the reputable
consumption of the community's superfluous production has had the
cordial support of British sentiment, perhaps fully as cordial as the
German popular subservience in the corresponding German scheme; both
being well embedded in the preconceptions of the common man. But the war
has put it all to a rude test, and has called on the British gentlemen's
executive committee to take over duties for which it was not designed.
The exigencies of this war of technological exploits have been almost
wholly, and very insistently, of a character not contemplated in the
constitution of such an executive committee of gentlemen-investors
designed to safeguard class interests and promote their pecuniary class
advantage by a blamelessly inconspicuous and indirect management of
national affairs. The methods are of the class known colloquially among
the vulgar-spoken American politicians as "pussyfooting" and
"log-rolling"; but always with such circumstance of magnitude,
authenticity and well-bred deference to precedent, as to give the
resulting routine of subreption, trover and conversion, an air not only
of benevolent consideration but of austere morality.

But the most austere courtesy and the most authentically dispassionate
division of benefits will not meet the underbred exigencies of a war
conducted on the mechanistic lines of the modern state of the industrial
arts. So the blameless, and for the purpose imbecile, executive
committee of gentlemen-investors has been insensibly losing the
confidence and the countenance of the common man; who, when all is said,
will always have to do what is to be done. The order of gentlemanly
parleying and brokery has, therefore, with many apprehensions of
calamity, been reluctantly and tardily giving ground before something
that is of a visibly underbred order. Increasingly underbred, and
thereby insensibly approaching the character of this war situation, but
accepted with visible reluctance and apprehension both by the ruling
class and by the underlying population. The urgent necessity of going to
such a basis, and of working out the matter in hand by an unblushing
recourse to that matter-of-fact logic of mechanical efficiency, which
alone can touch the difficulties of the case, but which has no respect
of persons,--this necessity has been present from the outset and has
been vaguely apprehended for long past, but it is only tardily and after
the chastening of heavy penalties on this gentlemanly imbecility that a
substantial move in that direction has been made. It has required much
British resolution to overcome the night-fear of going out into the
unhallowed ground of matter-of-fact, where the farthest earlier
excursions of the governmental agencies had taken them no farther than
such financial transactions as are incident to the accomplishment of
anything whatever in a commercial nation. And then, too, there is a
pecuniary interest in being interested in financial transactions.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27