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

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The requisite moral sanction may be had on various grounds, and, on the
whole, it is not an extremely difficult matter to arrange. In the
simplest and not infrequent case it may turn on a question of equity in
respect of trade or investment as between the citizens or subjects of
the several rival nations; the Chinese "Open Door" affords as sordid an
example as may be desired. Or it may be only an envious demand for a
share in the world's material resources--"A Place in the Sun," as a
picturesque phrase describes it; or "The Freedom of the Seas," as
another equally vague and equally invidious demand for international
equity phrases it. These demands are put forward with a color of
demanding something in the way of equitable opportunity for the
commonplace peaceable citizen; but quite plainly they have none but a
fanciful bearing on the fortunes of the common man in time of peace, and
they have a meaning to the nation only as a fighting unit; apart from
their prestige value, these things are worth fighting for only as
prospective means of fighting. The like appeal to the moral
sensibilities may, again, be made in the way of a call to self-defense,
under the rule of Live and let live; or it may also rest on the more
tenuous obligation to safeguard the national integrity of a weaker
neighbor, under a broader interpretation of the same equitable rule of
Live and let live. But in one way or another it is necessary to set up
the conviction that the promptings of patriotic ambition have the
sanction of moral necessity.

It is not that the line of national policy or patriotic enterprise so
entered upon with the support of popular sentiment need be right and
equitable as seen in dispassionate perspective from the outside, but
only that it should be capable of being made to seem right and equitable
to the biased populace whose moral convictions are requisite to its
prosecution; which is quite another matter. Nor is it that any such
patriotic enterprise is, in fact, entered on simply or mainly on these
moral grounds that so are alleged in its justification, but only that
some such colorable ground of justification or extenuation is necessary
to be alleged, and to be credited by popular belief.

It is not that the common man is not sufficiently patriotic, but only
that he is a patriot hampered with a plodding and uneasy sense of right
and honest dealing, and that one must make up one's account with this
moral bias in looking to any sustained and concerted action that draws
on the sentiment of the common man for its carrying on. But the moral
sense in the case may be somewhat easily satisfied with a modicum of
equity, in case the patriotic bias of the people is well pronounced, or
in case it is reenforced with a sufficient appeal to self-interest. In
those cases where the national fervor rises to an excited pitch, even
very attenuated considerations of right and justice, such as would under
ordinary conditions doubtfully bear scrutiny as extenuating
circumstances, may come to serve as moral authentication for any
extravagant course of action to which the craving for national prestige
may incite. The higher the pitch of patriotic fervor, the more tenuous
and more thread-bare may be the requisite moral sanction. By cumulative
excitation some very remarkable results have latterly been attained
along this line.

* * * * *

Patriotism is evidently a spirit of particularism, of aliency and
animosity between contrasted groups of persons; it lives on invidious
comparison, and works out in mutual hindrance and jealousy between
nations. It commonly goes the length of hindering intercourse and
obstructing traffic that would patently serve the material and cultural
well-being of both nationalities; and not infrequently, indeed
normally, it eventuates in competitive damage to both.

All this holds true in the world of modern civilisation, at the same
time that the modern civilised scheme of life is, notoriously, of a
cosmopolitan character, both in its cultural requirements and in its
economic structure. Modern culture is drawn on too large a scale, is of
too complex and multiform a character, requires the cooperation of too
many and various lines of inquiry, experience and insight, to admit of
its being confined within national frontiers, except at the cost of
insufferable crippling and retardation. The science and scholarship that
is the peculiar pride of civilised Christendom is not only
international, but rather it is homogeneously cosmopolitan; so that in
this bearing there are, in effect, no national frontiers; with the
exception, of course, that in a season of patriotic intoxication, such
as the current war has induced, even the scholars and scientists will be
temporarily overset by their patriotic fervour. Indeed, with the best
efforts of obscurantism and national jealousy to the contrary, it
remains patently true that modern culture is the culture of Christendom
at large, not the culture of one and another nation in severalty within
the confines of Christendom. It is only as and in so far as they partake
in and contribute to the general run of Western civilisation at large
that the people of any one of these nations of Christendom can claim
standing as a cultured nation; and even any distinctive variation from
this general run of civilised life, such as may give a "local colour" of
ideals, tastes and conventions, will, in point of cultural value, have
to be rated as an idle detail, a species of lost motion, that serves no
better purpose than a transient estrangement.

So also, the modern state of the industrial arts is of a like
cosmopolitan character, in point of scale, specialisation, and the
necessary use of diversified resources, of climate and raw materials.
None of the countries of Europe, e.g., is competent to carry on its
industry by modern technological methods without constantly drawing on
resources outside of its national boundaries. Isolation in this
industrial respect, exclusion from the world market, would mean
intolerable loss of efficiency, more pronounced the more fully the given
country has taken over this modern state of the industrial arts.
Exclusion from the general body of outlying resources would seriously
cripple any one or all of them, and effectually deprive them of the
usufruct of this technology; and partial exclusion, by prohibitive or
protective tariffs and the like, unavoidably results in a partial
lowering of the efficiency of each, and therefore a reduction of the
current well-being among them all together.

Into this cultural and technological system of the modern world the
patriotic spirit fits like dust in the eyes and sand in the bearings.
Its net contribution to the outcome is obscuration, distrust, and
retardation at every point where it touches the fortunes of modern
mankind. Yet it is forever present in the counsels of the statesmen and
in the affections of the common man, and it never ceases to command the
regard of all men as the prime attribute of manhood and the final test
of the desirable citizen. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that no
other consideration is allowed in abatement of the claims of patriotic
loyalty, and that such loyalty will be allowed to cover any multitude of
sins. When the ancient philosopher described Man as a "political animal,"
this, in effect, was what he affirmed; and today the ancient maxim is as
good as new. The patriotic spirit is at cross purposes with modern life,
but in any test case it is found that the claims of life yield before
those of patriotism; and any voice that dissents from this order of things
is as a voice crying in the wilderness.

* * * * *

To anyone who is inclined to moralise on the singular discrepancies of
human life this state of the case will be fruitful of much profound
speculation. The patriotic animus appears to be an enduring trait of
human nature, an ancient heritage that has stood over unshorn from time
immemorial, under the Mendelian rule of the stability of racial types.
It is archaic, not amenable to elimination or enduring suppression, and
apparently not appreciably to be mitigated by reflection, education,
experience or selective breeding.

Throughout the historical period, and presumably through an incalculable
period of the unrecorded past, patriotic manslaughter has consistently
been weeding out of each successive generation of men the most patriotic
among them; with the net result that the level of patriotic ardor today
appears to be no lower than it ever was. At the same time, with the
advance of population, of culture and of the industrial arts, patriotism
has grown increasingly disserviceable; and it is to all appearance as
ubiquitous and as powerful as ever, and is held in as high esteem.

The continued prevalence of this archaic animus among the modern
peoples, as well as the fact that it is universally placed high among
the virtues, must be taken to argue that it is, in its elements, an
hereditary trait, of the nature of an inborn impulsive propensity,
rather than a product of habituation. It is, in substance, not
something that can be learned and unlearned. From one generation to
another, the allegiance may shift from one nationality to another, but
the fact of unreflecting allegiance at large remains. And it all argues
also that no sensible change has taken effect in the hereditary
endowment of the race, at least in this respect, during the period known
by record or by secure inference,--say, since the early Neolithic in
Europe; and this in spite of the fact that there has all this while been
opportunity for radical changes in the European population by
cross-breeding, infiltration and displacement of the several racial
stocks that go to make up this population. Hence, on slight reflection
the inference has suggested itself and has gained acceptance that this
trait of human nature must presumably have been serviceable to the
peoples of the earlier time, on those levels of savagery or of the lower
barbarism on which the ancestral stocks of the European population first
made good their survival and proved their fitness to people that quarter
of the earth. Such, indeed, is the common view; so common as to pass for
matter-of-course, and therefore habitually to escape scrutiny.

Still it need not follow, as more patient reflection will show. All the
European peoples show much the same animus in this respect; whatever
their past history may have been, and whatever the difference in past
experience that might be conceived to have shaped their temperament. Any
difference in the pitch of patriotic conceit and animosity, between the
several nationalities or the several localities, is by no means wide,
even in cases where the racial composition of the population is held to
be very different, as, e.g., between the peoples on the Baltic seaboard
and those on the Mediterranean. In point of fact, in this matter of
patriotic animus there appears to be a wider divergence,
temperamentally, between individuals within any one of these communities
than between the common run in any one community and the corresponding
common run in any other. But even such divergence of individual temper
in respect of patriotism as is to be met with, first and last, is after
all surprisingly small in view of the scope for individual variation
which this European population would seem to offer.

* * * * *

These peoples of Europe, all and several, are hybrids compounded out of
the same run of racial elements, but mixed in varying proportions. On
any parallel of latitude--taken in the climatic rather than in the
geometric sense--the racial composition of the west-European population
will be much the same, virtually identical in effect, although always of
a hybrid complexion; whereas on any parallel of longitude--also in the
climatic sense--the racial composition will vary progressively, but
always within the limits of the same general scheme of hybridisation,--the
variation being a variation in the proportion in which the several racial
elements are present in any given case. But in no case does a notable
difference in racial composition coincide with a linguistic or national
frontier. But in point of patriotic animus these European peoples are one
as good as another, whether the comparison be traced on parallels of
latitude or of longitude. And the inhabitants of each national territory,
or of each detail locality, appear also to run surprisingly uniform in
respect of their patriotic spirit.

Heredity in any such community of hybrids will, superficially, appear to
run somewhat haphazard. There will, of course, be no traceable
difference between social or economic classes, in point of heredity,--as
is visibly the case in Christendom. But variation--of an apparently
haphazard description--will be large and ubiquitous among the
individuals of such a populace. Indeed, it is a matter of course and of
easy verification that individual variation within such a hybrid stock
will greatly exceed the extreme differences that may subsist between the
several racial types that have gone to produce the hybrid stock. Such is
the case of the European peoples. The inhabitants vary greatly among
themselves, both in physical and in mental traits, as would be expected;
and the variation between individuals in point of patriotic animus
should accordingly also be expected to be extremely wide,--should, in
effect, greatly exceed the difference, if any, in this respect between
the several racial elements engaged in the European population. Some
appreciable difference in this respect there appears to be, between
individuals; but individual divergence from the normal or average
appears always to be of a sporadic sort,--it does not run on class
lines, whether of occupation, status or property, nor does it run at all
consistently from parent to child. When all is told the argument returns
to the safe ground that these variations in point of patriotic animus
are sporadic and inconsequential, and do not touch the general
proposition that, one with another, the inhabitants of Europe and the
European Colonies are sufficiently patriotic, and that the average
endowment in this respect runs with consistent uniformity across all
differences of time, place and circumstance. It would, in fact, be
extremely hazardous to affirm that there is a sensible difference in the
ordinary pitch of patriotic sentiment as between any two widely diverse
samples of these hybrid populations, in spite of the fact that the
diversity in visible physical traits may be quite pronounced.

In short, the conclusion seems safe, on the whole, that in this respect
the several racial stocks that have gone to produce the existing
populations of Christendom have all been endowed about as richly one as
another. Patriotism appears to be a ubiquitous trait, at least among the
races and peoples of Christendom. From which it should follow, that
since there is, and has from the beginning been, no differential
advantage favoring one racial stock or one fashion of hybrid as against
another, in this matter of patriotic animus, there should also be no
ground of selective survival or selective elimination on this account as
between these several races and peoples. So that the undisturbed and
undiminished prevalence of this trait among the European population,
early or late, argues nothing as to its net serviceability or
disserviceability under any of the varying conditions of culture and
technology to which these Europeans have been subjected, first and last;
except that it has, in any case, not proved so disserviceable under the
conditions prevailing hitherto as to result in the extinction of these
Europeans, one with another.[4]

[Footnote 4: For a more extended discussion of this matter, cf.
_Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution_, ch. i. and
Supplementary Notes i. and ii.]

The patriotic frame of mind has been spoken of above as if it were an
hereditary trait, something after the fashion of a Mendelian unit
character. Doubtless this is not a competent account of the matter; but
the present argument scarcely needs a closer analysis. Still, in a
measure to quiet title and avoid annoyance, it may be noted that this
patriotic animus is of the nature of a "frame of mind" rather than a
Mendelian unit character; that it so involves a concatenation of
several impulsive propensities (presumably hereditary); and that both
the concatenation and the special mode and amplitude of the response are
a product of habituation, very largely of the nature of conventionalised
use and wont. What is said above, therefore, goes little farther than
saying that the underlying aptitudes requisite to this patriotic frame
of mind are heritable, and that use and wont as bearing on this point
run with sufficient uniformity to bring a passably uniform result. It
may be added that in this concatenation spoken of there seems to be
comprised, ordinarily, that sentimental attachment to habitat and custom
that is called love of home, or in its accentuated expression,
home-sickness; so also an invidious self-complacency, coupled with a
gregarious bent which gives the invidious comparison a group content;
and further, commonly if not invariably, a bent of abnegation,
self-abasement, subservience, or whatever it may best be called, that
inclines the bearer unreasoningly and unquestioningly to accept and
serve a prescriptive ideal given by custom or by customary authority.

* * * * *

The conclusion would therefore provisionally run to the effect that
under modern conditions the patriotic animus is wholly a disserviceable
trait in the spiritual endowment of these peoples,--in so far as bears
on the material conditions of life unequivocally, and as regards the
cultural interests more at large presumptively; whereas there is no
assured ground for a discriminating opinion as touches its possible
utility or disutility at any remote period in the past. There is, of
course, always room for the conservative estimate that, as the
possession of this spiritual trait has not hitherto resulted in the
extinction of the race, so it may also in the calculable future
continue to bring no more grievous results than a degree of mischief,
without even stopping or greatly retarding the increase of population.

All this, of course, is intended to apply only so far as it goes. It
must not be taken as intending to say any least word in derogation of
those high qualities that inspire the patriotic citizen. In its
economic, biological and cultural incidence patriotism appears to be an
untoward trait of human nature; which has, of course, nothing to say as
to its moral excellence, its aesthetic value, or its indispensability to
a worthy life. No doubt, it is in all these respects deserving of all
the esteem and encomiums that fall to its share. Indeed, its well-known
moral and aesthetic value, as well as the reprobation that is visited on
any shortcomings in this respect, signify, for the purposes of the
present argument, nothing more than that the patriotic animus meets the
unqualified approval of men because they are, all and several, infected
with it. It is evidence of the ubiquitous, intimate and ineradicable
presence of this quality in human nature; all the more since it
continues untiringly to be held in the highest esteem in spite of the
fact that a modicum of reflection should make its disserviceability
plain to the meanest understanding. No higher praise of moral
excellence, and no profounder test of loyalty, can be asked than this
current unreserved commendation of a virtue that makes invariably for
damage and discomfort. The virtuous impulse must be deep-seated and
indefeasible that drives men incontinently to do good that evil may come
of it. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."

In the light--and it is a dim and wavering light--of the archaeological
evidence, helped out by circumstantial evidence from such parallel or
analogous instances as are afforded by existing communities on a
comparable level of culture, one may venture more or less confidently on
a reconstruction of the manner of life among the early Europeans, of
early neolithic times and later.[5] And so one may form some conception
of the part played by this patriotic animus among those beginnings,
when, if not the race, at least its institutions were young; and when
the native temperament of these peoples was tried out and found fit to
survive through the age-long and slow-moving eras of stone and bronze.
In this connection, it appears safe to assume that since early neolithic
times no sensible change has taken effect in the racial complexion of
the European peoples; and therefore no sensible change in their
spiritual and mental make-up. So that in respect of the spiritual
elements that go to make up this patriotic animus the Europeans of today
will be substantially identical with the Europeans of that early time.
The like is true as regards those other traits of temperament that come
in question here, as being included among the stable characteristics
that still condition the life of these peoples under the altered
circumstances of the modern age.

[Footnote 5: Cf. _Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution_, as
above.]

The difference between prehistoric Europe and the present state of these
peoples resolves itself on analysis into a difference in the state of
the industrial arts, together with such institutional changes as have
come on in the course of working out this advance in the industrial
arts. The habits and the exigencies of life among these peoples have
greatly changed; whereas in temperament and capacities the peoples that
now live by and under the rule of this altered state of the industrial
arts are the same as they were. It is to be noted, therefore, that the
fact of their having successfully come through the long ages of
prehistory by the use of this mental and spiritual endowment can not be
taken to argue that these peoples are thereby fit to meet the exigencies
of this later and gravely altered age; nor will it do to assume that
because these peoples have themselves worked out this modern culture and
its technology, therefore it must all be suitable for their use and
conducive to their biological success. The single object lesson of the
modern urban community, with its endless requirements in the way of
sanitation, police, compulsory education, charities,--all this and many
other discrepancies in modern life should enjoin caution on anyone who
is inclined off-hand to hold that because modern men have created these
conditions, therefore these must be the most suitable conditions of life
for modern mankind.

In the beginning, that is to say in the European beginning, men lived in
small and close groups. Control was close within the group, and the
necessity of subordinating individual gains and preferences to the
common good was enjoined on the group by the exigencies of the case, on
pain of common extinction. The situation and usages of existing Eskimo
villages may serve to illustrate and enforce the argument on this head.
The solidarity of sentiment necessary to support the requisite
solidarity of action in the case would be a prime condition of survival
in any racial stock exposed to the conditions which surrounded these
early Europeans. This needful sense of solidarity would touch not simply
or most imperatively the joint prestige of the group, but rather the
joint material interests; and would enforce a spirit of mutual support
and dependence. Which would be rather helped than hindered by a jealous
attitude of joint prestige; so long as no divergent interests of members
within the group were in a position to turn this state of the common
sentiment to their own particular advantage.

This state of the case will have lasted for a relatively long time; long
enough to have tested the fitness of these peoples for that manner of
life,--longer, no doubt, than the interval that has elapsed since
history began. Special interests--e.g., personal and family
interests--will have been present and active in these days of the
beginning; but so long as the group at large was small enough to admit
of a close neighborly contact throughout its extent and throughout the
workday routine of life, at the same time that it was too small and
feeble to allow any appreciable dissipation of its joint energies in
such pursuit of selfish gains as would run counter to the paramount
business of the common livelihood, so long the sense of a common
livelihood and a joint fortune would continue to hold any particularist
ambitions effectually in check. Had it fallen out otherwise, the story
of the group in question would have been ended, and another and more
suitably endowed type of men would have taken the place vacated by its
extinction.

With a sensible advance in the industrial arts the scale of operations
would grow larger, and the group more numerous and extensive. The margin
between production and subsistence would also widen and admit additional
scope for individual ambitions and personal gains. And as this process
of growth and increasing productive efficiency went on, the control
exercised by neighborly surveillance, through the sentiment of the
common good as against the self-seeking pursuits of individuals and
sub-groups, would gradually slacken; until by progressive disuse it
would fall into a degree of abeyance; to be called into exercise and
incite to concerted action only in the face of unusual exigencies
touching the common fortunes of the group at large, or on persuasion
that the collective interest of the group at large was placed in
jeopardy in the molestation of one and another of its members from
without. The group's prestige at least would be felt to suffer in the
defeat or discourtesy suffered by any of its members at the hands of any
alien; and, under compulsion of the ancient sense of group solidarity,
whatever material hardship or material gain might so fall to individual
members in their dealings with the alien would pass easy scrutiny as
material detriment or gain inuring to the group at large,--in the
apprehension of men whose sense of community interest is inflamed with a
jealous disposition to safeguard their joint prestige.

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