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

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What, if anything, is due by consequence to overtake the political
strategy and the political preconceptions of the new century, is a
question that will obtrude itself, though with scant hope of finding a
ready answer. It may even seem a rash, as well as an ungraceful,
undertaking to inquire into the possible manner and degree of
prospective decay to which the received political ideals and virtues
would appear to be exposed by consequence of this derangement of the
ancient discipline to which men have been subjected. So much, however,
would seem evident, that the received virtues and ideals of patriotic
animosity and national jealousy can best be guarded against untimely
decay by resolutely holding to the formal observance of all outworn
punctilios of national integrity and discrimination, in spite of their
increasing disserviceability,--as would be done, e.g., or at least
sought to be done, in the installation of a league of neutral nations to
keep the peace and at the same time to safeguard those "national
interests" whose only use is to divide these nations and keep them in a
state of mutual envy and distrust.

* * * * *

Those peoples who are subject to the constraining governance of this
modern state of the industrial arts, as all modern peoples are in much
the same measure in which they are "modern," are, therefore, exposed to
a workday discipline running at cross purposes with the received law and
order as it takes effect in national affairs; and to this is to be added
that, with warlike enterprise also shifted to this same
mechanistic-technological ground, war can no longer be counted on so
confidently as before to correct all the consequent drift away from the
ancient landmarks of dynastic, pseudo-dynastic, and national enterprise
in dominion.

As has been noted above, modern warfare not only makes use of, and
indeed depends on, the modern industrial technology at every turn of the
operations in the field, but it draws on the ordinary industrial
resources of the countries at war in a degree and with an urgency never
equalled. No nation can hope to make a stand in modern warfare, much
less to make headway in warlike enterprise, without the most
thoroughgoing exploitation of the modern industrial arts. Which
signifies for the purpose in hand that any Power that harbors an
imperial ambition must take measures to let its underlying population
acquire the ways and means of the modern machine industry, without
reservation; which in turn signifies that popular education must be
taken care of to such an extent as may be serviceable in this manner of
industry and in the manner of life which this industrial system
necessarily imposes; which signifies, of course, that only the
thoroughly trained and thoroughly educated nations have a chance of
holding their place as formidable Powers in this latterday phase of
civilisation. What is needed is the training and education that go to
make proficiency in the modern fashion of technology and in those
material sciences that conduce to technological proficiency of this
modern order. It is a matter of course that in these premises any
appreciable illiteracy is an intolerable handicap. So is also any
training which discourages habitual self-reliance and initiative, or
which acts as a check on skepticism; for the skeptical frame of mind is
a necessary part of the intellectual equipment that makes for advance,
invention and understanding in the field of technological proficiency.

But these requirements, imperatively necessary as a condition of warlike
success, are at cross purposes with that unquestioning respect of
persons and that spirit of abnegation that alone can hold a people to
the political institutions of the old order and make them a willing
instrument in the hands of the dynastic statesmen. The dynastic State is
apparently caught in a dilemma. The necessary preparation for warlike
enterprise on the modern plan can apparently be counted on, in the long
run, to disintegrate the foundations of the dynastic State. But it is
only in the long run that this effect can be counted on; and it is
perhaps not securely to be counted on even in a moderately long run of
things as they have run hitherto, if due precautions are taken by the
interested statesmen,--as would seem to be indicated by the successful
conservation of archaic traits in the German peoples during the past
half century under the archaising rule of the Hohenzollern. It is a
matter of habituation, which takes time, and which can at the same time
be neutralised in some degree by indoctrination.

Still, when all is told, it will probably have to be conceded that,
e.g., such a nation as Russia will fall under this rule of inherent
disability imposed by the necessary use of the modern industrial arts.
Without a fairly full and free command of these modern industrial
methods on the part of the Russian people, together with the virtual
disappearance of illiteracy, and with the facile and far-reaching system
of communication which it all involves, the Russian Imperial
establishment would not be a formidable power or a serious menace to the
pacific nations; and it is not easy to imagine how the Imperial
establishment could retain its hold and its character under the
conditions indicated.

The case of Japan, taken by itself, rests on somewhat similar lines as
these others. In time, and in this case the time-allowance should
presumably not be anything very large, the Japanese people are likely to
get an adequate command of the modern technology; which would, here as
elsewhere, involve the virtual disappearance of the present high
illiteracy, and the loss, in some passable measure, of the current
superstitiously crass nationalism of that people. There are indications
that something of that kind, and of quite disquieting dimensions, is
already under way; though with no indication that any consequent
disintegrating habits of thought have yet invaded the sacred close of
Japanese patriotic devotion.

Again, it is a question of time and habituation. With time and
habituation the emperor may insensibly cease to be of divine pedigree,
and the syndicate of statesmen who are doing business under his
signature may consequently find their measures of Imperial expansion
questioned by the people who pay the bills. But so long as the Imperial
syndicate enjoy their present immunity from outside obstruction, and can
accordingly carry on an uninterrupted campaign of cumulative predation
in Korea, China and Manchuria, the patriotic infatuation is less likely
to fall off, and by so much the decay of Japanese loyalty will be
retarded. Yet, even if allowed anything that may seem at all probable in
the way of a free hand for aggression against their hapless neighbours,
the skepticism and insubordination to personal rule that seems
inseparable in the long run from addiction to the modern industrial arts
should be expected presently to overtake the Japanese spirit of loyal
servitude. And the opportunity of Imperial Japan lies in the interval.
So also does the menace of Imperial Japan as a presumptive disturber of
the peace at large.

* * * * *

At the cost of some unavoidable tedium, the argument as regards these
and similar instances may be summarised. It appears, in the (possibly
doubtful) light of the history of democratic institutions and of modern
technology hitherto, as also from the logical character of this
technology and its underlying material sciences, that consistent
addiction to the peculiar habits of thought involved in its carrying on
will presently induce a decay of those preconceptions in which dynastic
government and national ambitions have their ground. Continued addiction
to this modern scheme of industrial life should in time eventuate in a
decay of militant nationalism, with a consequent lapse of warlike
enterprise. At the same time, popular proficiency in the modern
industrial arts, with all that that implies in the way of intelligence
and information, is indispensable as a means to any successful warlike
enterprise on the modern plan. The menace of warlike aggression from
such dynastic States, e.g., as Imperial Germany and Imperial Japan is
due to their having acquired a competent use of this modern technology,
while they have not yet had time to lose that spirit of dynastic loyalty
which they have carried over from an archaic order of things, out of
which they have emerged at a very appreciably later period (last half of
the nineteenth century) than those democratic peoples whose peace they
now menace. As has been said, they have taken over this modern state of
the industrial arts without having yet come in for the defects of its
qualities. This modern technology, with its underlying material
sciences, is a novel factor in the history of human culture, in that
addiction to its use conduces to the decay of militant patriotism, at
the same time that its employment so greatly enhances the warlike
efficiency of even a pacific people, at need, that they can not be
seriously molested by any other peoples, however valorous and numerous,
who have not a competent use of this technology. A peace at large among
the civilised nations, by loss of the militant temper through addiction
to this manner of arts of peace, therefore, carries no risk of
interruption by an inroad of warlike barbarians,--always provided that
those existing archaic peoples who might pass muster as barbarians are
brought into line with the pacific nations on a footing of peace and
equality. The disparity in point of outlook as between the resulting
peace at large by neglect of bootless animosities, on the one hand, and
those historic instances of a peaceable civilisation that have been
overwhelmed by warlike barbarian invasions, on the other hand, should be
evident.

* * * * *

It is always possible, indeed it would scarcely be surprising to find,
that the projected league of neutrals or of nations bent on peace can
not be brought to realisation at this juncture; perhaps not for a long
time yet. But it should at the same time seem reasonable to expect that
the drift toward a peaceable settlement of national discrepancies such
as has been visible in history for some appreciable time past will, in
the absence of unforeseen hindrances, work out to some such effect in
the course of further experience under modern conditions. And whether
the projected peace compact at its inception takes one form or another,
provided it succeeds in its main purpose, the long-term drift of things
under its rule should logically set toward some ulterior settlement of
the general character of what has here been spoken of as a peace by
neglect or by neutralisation of discrepancies.

It should do so, in the absence of unforeseen contingencies; more
particularly if there were no effectual factor of dissension included in
the fabric of institutions within the nation. But there should also,
e.g., be no difficulty in assenting to the forecast that when and if
national peace and security are achieved and settled beyond recall, the
discrepancy in fact between those who own the country's wealth and those
who do not is presently due to come to an issue. Any attempt to forecast
the form which this issue is to take, or the manner, incidents,
adjuncts and sequelae of its determination, would be a bolder and a more
ambiguous, undertaking. Hitherto attempts to bring this question to an
issue have run aground on the real or fancied jeopardy to paramount
national interests. How, if at all, this issue might affect national
interests and international relations, would obviously depend in the
first instance on the state of the given national establishment and the
character of the international engagements entered into in the formation
of this projected pacific league. It is always conceivable that the
transactions involving so ubiquitous an issue might come to take on an
international character and that they might touch the actual or fanciful
interests of these diverse nations with such divergent effect as to
bring on a rupture of the common understanding between them and of the
peace-compact in which the common understanding is embodied.

* * * * *

In the beginning, that is to say in the beginnings out of which this
modern era of the Western civilisation has arisen, with its scheme of
law and custom, there grew into the scheme of law and custom, by settled
usage, a right of ownership and of contract in disposal of
ownership,--which may or may not have been a salutary institutional
arrangement on the whole, under the circumstances of the early days.
With the later growth of handicraft and the petty trade in Western
Europe this right of ownership and contract came to be insisted on,
standardised under legal specifications, and secured against molestation
by the governmental interests; more particularly and scrupulously among
those peoples that have taken the lead in working out that system of
free or popular institutions that marks the modern civilised nations. So
it has come to be embodied in the common law of the modern world as an
inviolable natural right. It has all the prescriptive force of legally
authenticated immemorial custom.

Under the system of handicraft and petty trade this right of property
and free contract served the interest of the common man, at least in
much of its incidence, and acted in its degree to shelter industrious
and economical persons from hardship and indignity at the hands of their
betters. There seems reason to believe, as is commonly believed, that so
long as that relatively direct and simple scheme of industry and trade
lasted, the right of ownership and contract was a salutary custom, in
its bearing on the fortunes of the common man. It appears also, on the
whole, to have been favorable to the fuller development of the
handicraft technology, as well as to its eventual outgrowth into the new
line of technological expedients and contrivances that presently gave
rise to the machine industry and the large-scale business enterprise.

The standard theories of economic science have assumed the rights of
property and contract as axiomatic premises and ultimate terms of
analysis; and their theories are commonly drawn in such a form as would
fit the circumstances of the handicraft industry and the petty trade,
and such as can be extended to any other economic situation by shrewd
interpretation. These theories, as they run from Adam Smith down through
the nineteenth century and later, appear tenable, on the whole, when
taken to apply to the economic situation of that earlier time, in
virtually all that they have to say on questions of wages, capital,
savings, and the economy and efficiency of management and production by
the methods of private enterprise resting on these rights of ownership
and contract and governed by the pursuit of private gain. It is when
these standard theories are sought to be applied to the later situation,
which has outgrown the conditions of handicraft, that they appear
nugatory or meretricious. The "competitive system" which these standard
theories assume as a necessary condition of their own validity, and
about which they are designed to form a defensive hedge, would, under
those earlier conditions of small-scale enterprise and personal contact,
appear to have been both a passably valid assumption as a premise and a
passably expedient scheme of economic relations and traffic. At that
period of its life-history it can not be said consistently to have
worked hardship to the common man; rather the reverse. And the common
man in that time appears to have had no misgivings about the excellence
of the scheme or of that article of Natural Rights that underlies it.

This complexion of things, as touches the effectual bearing of the
institution of property and the ancient customary rights of ownership,
has changed substantially since the time of Adam Smith. The "competitive
system," which he looked to as the economic working-out of that "simple
and obvious system of natural liberty" that always engaged his best
affections, has in great measure ceased to operate as a routine of
natural liberty, in fact; particularly in so far as touches the fortunes
of the common man, the impecunious mass of the people. _De jure_, of
course, the competitive system and its inviolable rights of ownership
are a citadel of Natural Liberty; but _de facto_ the common man is now,
and has for some time been, feeling the pinch of it. It is law, and
doubtless it is good law, grounded in immemorial usage and authenticated
with statute and precedent. But circumstances have so changed that this
good old plan has in a degree become archaic, perhaps unprofitable, or
even mischievous, on the whole, and especially as touches the conditions
of life for the common man. At least, so the common man in these modern
democratic and commercial countries is beginning to apprehend the
matter.

Some slight and summary characterisation of these changing circumstances
that have affected the incidence of the rights of property during modern
times may, therefore, not be out of place; with a view to seeing how far
and why these rights may be due to come under advisement and possible
revision, in case a state of settled peace should leave men's attention
free to turn to these internal, as contrasted with national interests.

Under that order of handicraft and petty trade that led to the
standardisation of these rights of ownership in the accentuated form
which belongs to them in modern law and custom, the common man had a
practicable chance of free initiative and self-direction in his choice
and pursuit of an occupation and a livelihood, in so far as rights of
ownership bore on his case. At that period the workman was the main
factor in industry and, in the main and characteristically, the question
of his employment was a question of what he would do. The material
equipment of industry--the "plant," as it has come to be called--was
subject of ownership, then as now; but it was then a secondary factor
and, notoriously, subsidiary to the immaterial equipment of skill,
dexterity and judgment embodied in the person of the craftsman. The body
of information, or general knowledge, requisite to a workmanlike
proficiency as handicraftsman was sufficiently slight and simple to fall
within the ordinary reach of the working class, without special
schooling; and the material equipment necessary to the work, in the way
of tools and appliances, was also slight enough, ordinarily, to bring it
within the reach of the common man. The stress fell on the acquirement
of that special personal skill, dexterity and judgment that would
constitute the workman a master of his craft. Given a reasonable measure
of pertinacity, the common man would be able to compass the material
equipment needful to the pursuit of his craft, and so could make his way
to a livelihood; and the inviolable right of ownership would then serve
to secure him the product of his own industry, in provision for his own
old-age and for a fair start in behalf of his children. At least in the
popular conception, and presumably in some degree also in fact, the
right of property so served as a guarantee of personal liberty and a
basis of equality. And so its apologists still look on the institution.

In a very appreciable degree this complexion of things and of popular
conceptions has changed since then; although, as would be expected, the
change in popular conceptions has not kept pace with the changing
circumstances. In all the characteristic and controlling lines of
industry the modern machine technology calls for a very considerable
material equipment; so large an equipment, indeed, that this plant, as
it is called, always represents a formidable amount of invested wealth;
and also so large that it will, typically, employ a considerable number
of workmen per unit of plant. On the transition to the machine
technology the plant became the unit of operation, instead of the
workman, as had previously been the case; and with the further
development of this modern technology, during the past hundred and fifty
years or so, the unit of operation and control has increasingly come to
be not the individual or isolated plant but rather an articulated group
of such plants working together as a balanced system and keeping pace in
common, under a collective business management; and coincidently the
individual workman has been falling into the position of an auxiliary
factor, nearly into that of an article of supply, to be charged up as an
item of operating expenses. Under this later and current system,
discretion and initiative vest not in the workman but in the owners of
the plant, if anywhere. So that at this point the right of ownership has
ceased to be, in fact, a guarantee of personal liberty to the common
man, and has come to be, or is coming to be, a guarantee of dependence.
All of which engenders a feeling of unrest and insecurity, such as to
instill a doubt in the mind of the common man as to the continued
expediency of this arrangement and of the prescriptive rights of
property on which the arrangement rests.

There is also an insidious suggestion, carrying a sinister note of
discredit, that comes in from ethnological science at this point; which
is adapted still further to derange the common man's faith in this
received institution of ownership and its control of the material
equipment of industry. To students interested in human culture it is a
matter of course that this material equipment is a means of utilising
the state of the industrial arts; that it is useful in industry and
profitable to its owners only because and in so far as it is a creation
of the current technological knowledge and enables its owner to
appropriate the usufruct of the current industrial arts. It is likewise
a matter of course that this technological knowledge, that so enables
the material equipment to serve the purposes of production and of
private gain, is a free gift of the community at large to the owners of
industrial plant; and, under latterday conditions, to them exclusively.
The state of the industrial arts is a joint heritage of the community at
large, but where, as in the modern countries, the work to be done by
this technology requires a large material equipment, the usufruct of
this joint heritage passes, in effect, into the hands of the owners of
this large material equipment.

These owners have, ordinarily, contributed nothing to the technology,
the state of the industrial arts, from which their control of the
material equipment of industry enables them to derive a gain. Indeed, no
class or condition of men in the modern community--with the possible
exception of politicians and the clergy--can conceivably contribute less
to the community's store of technological knowledge than the large
owners of invested wealth. By one of those singular inversions due to
production being managed for private gain, it happens that these
investors are not only not given to the increase and diffusion of
technological knowledge, but they have a well-advised interest in
retarding or defeating improvements in the industrial arts in detail.
Improvements, innovations that heighten productive efficiency in the
general line of production in which a given investment is placed, are
commonly to be counted on to bring "obsolescence by supersession" to the
plant already engaged in that line; and therefore to bring a decline in
its income-yielding capacity, and so in its capital or investment value.

Invested capital yields income because it enjoys the usufruct of the
community's technological knowledge; it has an effectual monopoly of
this usufruct because this machine technology requires large material
appliances with which to do its work; the interest of the owners of
established industrial plant will not tolerate innovations designed to
supersede these appliances. The bearing of ownership on industry and on
the fortunes of the common man is accordingly, in the main, the bearing
which it has by virtue of its monopoly control of the industrial arts,
and its consequent control of the conditions of employment and of the
supply of vendible products. It takes effect chiefly by inhibition and
privation; stoppage of production in case it brings no suitable profit
to the investor, refusal of employment and of a livelihood to the
workmen in case their product does not command a profitable price in the
market.

The expediency of so having the nation's industry managed on a footing
of private ownership in the pursuit of private gain, by persons who can
show no equitable personal claim to even the most modest livelihood, and
whose habitual method of controlling industry is sabotage--refusal to
let production go on except it affords them an unearned income--the
expediency of all this is coming to be doubted by those who have to pay
the cost of it. And it does not go far to lessen their doubts to find
that the cost which they pay is commonly turned to no more urgent or
useful purpose than a conspicuously wasteful consumption of
superfluities by the captains of sabotage and their domestic
establishments.

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