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

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It appears already to be realised in the most responsible quarter that
America needs the succor of the other pacific nations, with a need that
is not to be put away or put off; as it is also coming to be realised
that the Imperial Powers are disturbers of the peace, by force of their
Imperial character. Of course, the politicians who seek their own
advantage in the nation's embarrassment are commonly unable to see the
matter in that light. But it is also apparent that the popular sentiment
is affected with the same apprehension, more and more as time passes and
the aims and methods of the Imperial Powers become more patent.

Hitherto the spokesmen of a pacific federation of nations have spoken
for a league of such an (indeterminate) constitution as to leave all the
federated nations undisturbed in all their conduct of their own affairs,
domestic or international; probably for want of second thought as to the
complications of copartnership between them in so grave and unwonted an
enterprise. They have also spoken of America's share in the project as
being that of an interested outsider, whose interest in any
precautionary measures of this kind is in part a regard for his own
tranquility as a disinterested neighbour, but in greater part a humane
solicitude for the well-being of civilised mankind at large. In this
view, somewhat self-complacent it is to be admitted, America is
conceived to come into the case as initiator and guide, about whom the
pacific nations are to cluster as some sort of queen-bee.

Now, there is not a little verisimilitude in this conception of America
as a sort of central office and a tower of strength in the projected
federation of neutral nations, however pharisaical an appearance it may
all have in the self-complacent utterances of patriotic Americans. The
American republic is, after all, the greatest of the pacific nations of
Christendom, in resources, population and industrial capacity; and it is
also not to be denied that the temper of this large population is, on
the whole, as pacific as that of any considerable people--outside of
China. The adherence of the American republic would, in effect, double
the mass and powers of the projected league, and would so place it
beyond all hazard of defeat from without, or even of serious outside
opposition to its aims.

Yet it will not hold true that America is either disinterested or
indispensable. The unenviable position of the indispensable belongs to
the United Kingdom, and carries with it the customary suspicion of
interested motives that attaches to the stronger party in a bargain. To
America, on the other hand, the league is indispensable, as a refuge
from otherwise inevitable dangers ahead; and it is only a question of a
moderate allowance of time for the American voters to realise that
without an adequate copartnership with the other pacific nations the
outlook of the Republic is altogether precarious. Single-handed, America
can not defend itself, except at a prohibitive cost; whereas in
copartnership with these others the national defense becomes a virtually
negligible matter. It is for America a choice between a policy of
extravagant armament and aggressive diplomacy, with a doubtful issue, on
the one side, and such abatement of national pretensions as would
obviate bootless contention, on the other side.

Yet, it must be admitted, the patriotic temper of the American people is
of such a susceptible kind as to leave the issue in doubt. Not that the
Americans will not endeavor to initiate some form of compact for the
keeping of the peace, when hostilities are concluded; barring unforeseen
contingencies, it is virtually a foregone conclusion that the attempt
will be made, and that the Americans will take an active part in its
promotion. But the doubt is as to their taking such a course as will
lead to a compact of the kind needed to safeguard the peace of the
country. The business interests have much to say in the counsels of the
Americans, and these business interests look to short-term
gains--American business interests particularly--to be derived from the
country's necessities. It is likely to appear that the business
interests, through representatives in Congress and elsewhere, will
disapprove of any peace compact that does not involve an increase of the
national armament and a prospective demand for munitions and an
increased expenditure of the national funds.

With or without the adherence of America, the pacific nations of Europe
will doubtless endeavour to form a league or alliance designed to keep
the peace. If America does not come into the arrangement it may well
come to nothing much more than a further continued defensive alliance of
the belligerent nations now opposed to the German coalition. In any case
it is still a point in doubt whether the league so projected is to be
merely a compact of defensive armament against a common enemy--in which
case it will necessarily be transient, perhaps ephemeral--or a more
inclusive coalition of a closer character designed to avoid any breach
of the peace, by disarmament and by disallowance and disclaimer of such
national pretensions and punctilio as the patriotic sentiment of the
contracting parties will consent to dispense with. The nature of the
resulting peace, therefore, as well as its chances of duration, will in
great measure be conditioned on the fashion of peace-compact on which it
is to rest; which will be conditioned in good part on the degree in
which the warlike coalition under German Imperial control is effectually
to be eliminated from the situation as a prospective disturber of the
peace; which, in turn, is a question somewhat closely bound up with the
further duration of the war, as has already been indicated in an earlier
passage.

CHAPTER VII

PEACE AND THE PRICE SYSTEM

Evidently the conception of peace on which its various spokesmen are
proceeding is by no means the same for all of them. In the current
German conception, e.g., as seen in the utterances of its many and
urgent spokesmen, peace appears to be of the general nature of a truce
between nations, whose God-given destiny it is, in time, to adjust a
claim to precedence by wager of battle. They will sometimes speak of it,
euphemistically, with a view to conciliation, as "assurance of the
national future," in which the national future is taken to mean an
opportunity for the extension of the national dominion at the expense of
some other national establishment. In the same connection one may recall
the many eloquent passages on the State and its paramount place and
value in the human economy. The State is useful for disturbing the
peace. This German notion may confidently be set down as the lowest of
the current conceptions of peace; or perhaps rather as the notion of
peace reduced to the lowest terms at which it continues to be
recognisable as such. Next beyond in that direction lies the notion of
armistice; which differs from this conception of peace chiefly in
connoting specifically a definite and relatively short interval between
warlike operations.

The conception of peace as being a period of preparation for war has
many adherents outside the Fatherland, of course. Indeed, it has
probably a wider vogue and a readier acceptance among men who interest
themselves in questions of peace and war than any other. It goes hand in
hand with that militant nationalism that is taken for granted,
conventionally, as the common ground of those international relations
that play a part in diplomatic intercourse. It is the diplomatist's
_metier_ to talk war in parables of peace. This conception of peace as a
precarious interval of preparation has come down to the present out of
the feudal age and is, of course, best at home where the feudal range of
preconceptions has suffered least dilapidation; and it carries the
feudalistic presumption that all national establishments are competitors
for dominion, after the scheme of Macchiavelli. The peace which is had
on this footing, within the realm, is a peace of subjection, more or
less pronounced according as the given national establishment is more or
less on the militant order; a warlike organisation being necessarily of
a servile character, in the same measure in which it is warlike.

In much the same measure and with much the same limitations as the
modern democratic nations have departed from the feudal system of civil
relations and from the peculiar range of conceptions which characterise
that system, they have also come in for a new or revised conception of
peace. Instead of its being valued chiefly as a space of time in which
to prepare for war, offensive or defensive, among these democratic and
provisionally pacific nations it has come to stand in the common
estimation as the normal and stable manner of life, good and commendable
in its own right. These modern, pacific, commonwealths stand on the
defensive, habitually. They are still pugnaciously national, but they
have unlearned so much of the feudal preconceptions as to leave them in
a defensive attitude, under the watch-word: Peace with honour. Their
quasi-feudalistic national prestige is not to be trifled with, though it
has lost so much of its fascination as ordinarily not to serve the
purposes of an aggressive enterprise, at least not without some shrewd
sophistication at the hands of militant politicians and their diplomatic
agents. Of course, an exuberant patriotism may now and again take on the
ancient barbarian vehemence and lead such a provisionally pacific nation
into an aggressive raid against a helpless neighbour; but it remains
characteristically true, after all, that these peoples look on the
country's peace as the normal and ordinary course of things, which each
nation is to take care of for itself and by its own force.

The ideal of the nineteenth-century statesmen was to keep the peace by a
balance of power; an unstable equilibrium of rivalries, in which it was
recognised that eternal vigilance was the price of peace by
equilibration. Since then, by force of the object-lesson of the
twentieth-century wars, it has become evident that eternal vigilance
will no longer keep the peace by equilibration, and the balance of power
has become obsolete. At the same time things have so turned that an
effective majority of the civilised nations now see their advantage in
peace, without further opportunity to seek further dominion. These
nations have also been falling into the shape of commonwealths, and so
have lost something of their national spirit.

With much reluctant hesitation and many misgivings, the statesmen of
these pacific nations are accordingly busying themselves with schemes
for keeping the peace on the unfamiliar footing of a stable equilibrium;
the method preferred on the whole being an equilibration of
make-believe, in imitation of the obsolete balance of power. There is a
meticulous regard for national jealousies and discriminations, which it
is thought necessary to keep intact. Of course, on any one of these
slightly diversified plans of keeping the peace on a stable footing of
copartnery among the pacific nations, national jealousies and national
integrity no longer have any substantial meaning. But statesmen think
and plan in terms of precedent; which comes to thinking and planning in
terms of make-believe, when altered circumstances have made the
precedents obsolete. So one comes to the singular proposal of the
statesmen, that the peace is to be kept in concert among these pacific
nations by a provision of force with which to break it at will. The
peace that is to be kept on this footing of national discriminations and
national armaments will necessarily be of a precarious kind; being, in
effect, a statesmanlike imitation of the peace as it was once kept even
more precariously by the pacific nations in severalty.

Hitherto the movement toward peace has not gone beyond this conception
of it, as a collusive safeguarding of national discrepancies by force of
arms. Such a peace is necessarily precarious, partly because armed force
is useful for breaking the peace, partly because the national
discrepancies, by which these current peace-makers set such store, are a
constant source of embroilment. What the peace-makers might logically be
expected to concern themselves about would be the elimination of these
discrepancies that make for embroilment. But what they actually seem
concerned about is their preservation. A peace by collusive neglect of
those remnants of feudalistic make-believe that still serve to divide
the pacific nations has hitherto not seriously come under advisement.

Evidently, hitherto, and for the calculable future, peace is a relative
matter, a matter of more or less, whichever of the several working
conceptions spoken of above may rule the case. Evidently, too, a peace
designed to strengthen the national establishment against eventual war,
will count to a different effect from a collusive peace of a defensive
kind among the pacific peoples, designed by its projectors to conserve
those national discrepancies on which patriotic statesmen like to dwell.
Different from both would be the value of a peace by neglect of such
useless national discriminations as now make for embroilment. A
protracted season of peace should logically have a somewhat different
cultural value according to the character of the public policy to be
pursued under its cover. So that a safe and sane conservation of the
received law and order should presumably best be effected under cover of
a collusive peace of the defensive kind, which is designed to retain
those national discrepancies intact that count for so much in the
national life of today, both as a focus of patriotic sentiment and as an
outlet for national expenditures. This plan would involve the least
derangement of the received order among the democratic peoples, although
the plan might itself undergo some change in the course of time.

* * * * *

Among the singularities of the latterday situation, in this connection,
and brought out by the experiences of the great war, is a close
resemblance between latterday warlike operations and the ordinary
processes of industry. Modern warfare and modern industry alike are
carried on by technological processes subject to surveillance and
direction by mechanical engineers, or perhaps rather experts in
engineering science of the mechanistic kind. War is not now a matter of
the stout heart and strong arm. Not that these attributes do not have
their place and value in modern warfare; but they are no longer the
chief or decisive factors in the case. The exploits that count in this
warfare are technological exploits; exploits of technological science,
industrial appliances, and technological training. As has been remarked
before, it is no longer a gentlemen's war, and the gentleman, as such,
is no better than a marplot in the game as it is played.

Certain consequences follow from this state of the case. Technology and
industrial experience, in large volume and at a high proficiency, are
indispensable to the conduct of war on the modern plan, as well as a
large, efficient and up-to-date industrial community and industrial
plant to supply the necessary material of this warfare. At the same time
the discipline of the campaign, as it impinges on the rank and file as
well as on the very numerous body of officers and technicians, is not at
cross purposes with the ordinary industrial employments of peace, or not
in the same degree as has been the case in the past, even in the recent
past. The experience of the campaign does not greatly unfit the men who
survive for industrial uses; nor does it come in as a sheer interruption
of their industrial training, or break the continuity of that range of
habits of thought which modern industry of the technological order
induces; not in the same degree as was the case under the conditions of
war as carried on in the nineteenth century. The cultural, and
particularly the technological, incidence of this modern warfare should
evidently be appreciably different from what has been experienced in the
past, and from what this past experience has induced students of these
matters to look for among the psychological effects of warlike
experience.

It remains true that the discipline of the campaign, however impersonal
it may tend to become, still inculcates personal subordination and
unquestioning obedience; and yet the modern tactics and methods of
fighting bear somewhat more on the individual's initiative, discretion,
sagacity and self-possession than once would have been true. Doubtless
the men who come out of this great war, the common men, will bring home
an accentuated and acrimonious patriotism, a venomous hatred of the
enemies whom they have missed killing; but it may reasonably be doubted
if they come away with a correspondingly heightened admiration and
affection for their betters who have failed to make good as foremen in
charge of this teamwork in killing. The years of the war have been
trying to the reputation of officials and officers, who have had to meet
uncharted exigencies with not much better chance of guessing the way
through than their subalterns have had.

By and large, it is perhaps not to be doubted that the populace now
under arms will return from the experience of the war with some net gain
in loyalty to the nation's honour and in allegiance to their masters;
particularly the German subjects,--the like is scarcely true for the
British; but a doubt will present itself as to the magnitude of this net
gain in subordination, or this net loss in self-possession. A doubt may
be permitted as to whether the common man in the countries of the
Imperial coalition, e.g., will, as the net outcome of this war
experience, be in a perceptibly more pliable frame of mind as touches
his obligations toward his betters and subservience to the irresponsible
authority exercised by the various governmental agencies, than he was at
the outbreak of the war. At that time, there is reason to believe, there
was an ominous, though scarcely threatening, murmur of discontent
beginning to be heard among the working classes of the industrial towns.
It is fair to presume, however, that the servile discipline of the
service and the vindictive patriotism bred of the fight should combine
to render the populace of the Fatherland more amenable to the
irresponsible rule of the Imperial dynasty and its subaltern royal
establishments, in spite of any slight effect of a contrary character
exercised by the training in technological methods and in self-reliance,
with which this discipline of the service has been accompanied. As to
the case of the British population, under arms or under compulsion of
necessity at home, something has already been said in an earlier
passage; and much will apparently depend, in their case, on the further
duration of the war. The case of the other nationalities involved, both
neutrals and belligerents, is even more obscure in this bearing, but it
is also of less immediate consequence for the present argument.

* * * * *

The essentially feudal virtues of loyalty and bellicose patriotism would
appear to have gained their great ascendency over all men's spirit
within the Western civilisation by force of the peculiarly consistent
character of the discipline of life under feudal conditions, whether in
war or peace; and to the same uniformity of these forces that shaped the
workday habits of thought among the feudal nations is apparently due
that profound institutionalisation of the preconceptions of patriotism
and loyalty, by force of which these preconceptions still hold the
modern peoples in an unbreakable web of prejudice, after the conditions
favoring their acquirement have in great part ceased to operate. These
preconceptions of national solidarity and international enmity have come
down from the past as an integral part of the unwritten constitution
underlying all these modern nations, even those which have departed most
widely from the manner of life to which the peoples owe these ancient
preconceptions. Hitherto, or rather until recent times, the workday
experience of these peoples has not seriously worked at cross purposes
with the patriotic spirit and its bias of national animosity; and what
discrepancy there has effectively been between the discipline of workday
life and the received institutional preconceptions on this head, has
hitherto been overborne by the unremitting inculcation of these virtues
by interested politicians, priests and publicists, who speak habitually
for the received order of things.

That order of things which is known on its political and civil side as
the feudal system, together with that era of the dynastic States which
succeeds the feudal age technically so called, was, on its industrial or
technological side, a system of trained man-power organised on a plan of
subordination of man to man. On the whole, the scheme and logic of that
life, whether in its political (warlike) or its industrial doings,
whether in war or peace, runs on terms of personal capacity, proficiency
and relations. The organisation of the forces engaged and the
constraining rules according to which this organisation worked, were of
the nature of personal relations, and the impersonal factors in the case
were taken for granted. Politics and war were a field for personal
valor, force and cunning, in practical effect a field for personal force
and fraud. Industry was a field in which the routine of life, and its
outcome, turned on "the skill, dexterity and judgment of the individual
workman," in the words of Adam Smith.

The feudal age passed, being done to death by handicraft industry,
commercial traffic, gunpowder, and the state-making politicians. But the
political States of the statemakers, the dynastic States as they may
well be called, continued the conduct of political life on the personal
plane of rivalry and jealousy between dynasties and between their
States; and in spite of gunpowder and the new military engineering,
warfare continued also to be, in the main and characteristically, a
field in which man-power and personal qualities decided the outcome, by
virtue of personal "skill, dexterity and judgment." Meantime industry
and its technology by insensible degrees underwent a change in the
direction of impersonalisation, particularly in those countries in which
state-making and its warlike enterprise had ceased, or were ceasing, to
be the chief interests and the controlling preconception of the people.

The logic of the new, mechanical industry which has supplanted
handicraft in these countries, is a mechanistic logic, which proceeds in
terms of matter-of-fact strains, masses, velocities, and the like,
instead of the "skill, dexterity and judgment" of personal agents. The
new industry does not dispense with the personal agencies, nor can it
even be said to minimise the need of skill, dexterity and judgment in
the personal agents employed, but it does take them and their attributes
for granted as in some sort a foregone premise to its main argument. The
logic of the handicraft system took the impersonal agencies for granted;
the machine industry takes the skill, dexterity and judgment of the
workmen for granted. The processes of thought, and therefore the
consistent habitual discipline, of the former ran in terms of the
personal agents engaged, and of the personal relations of discretion,
control and subordination necessary to the work; whereas the
mechanistic logic of the modern technology, more and more consistently,
runs in terms of the impersonal forces engaged, and inculcates an
habitual predilection for matter-of-fact statement, and an habitual
preconception that the findings of material science alone are
conclusive.

In those nations that have made up the advance guard of Western
civilisation in its movement out of feudalism, the disintegrating effect
of this matter-of-fact animus inculcated by the later state of the
industrial arts has apparently acted effectively, in some degree, to
discredit those preconceptions of personal discrimination on which
dynastic rule is founded. But in no case has the discipline of this
mechanistic technology yet wrought its perfect work or come to a
definitive conclusion. Meantime war and politics have on the whole
continued on the ancient plane; it may perhaps be fair to say that
politics has so continued because warlike enterprise has continued still
to be a matter of such personal forces as skill, dexterity and judgment,
valor and cunning, personal force and fraud. Latterly, gradually, but
increasingly, the technology of war, too, has been shifting to the
mechanistic plane; until in the latest phases of it, somewhere about the
turn of the century, it is evident that the logic of warfare too has
come to be the same mechanistic logic that makes the modern state of the
industrial arts.

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