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

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With some gift for casuistry one may, at least conceivably, hold that
the felt need of Imperial self-aggrandisement may become so urgent as to
justify, or at least to condone, forcible dispossession of weaker
nationalities. This might, indeed it has, become a sufficiently
perplexing question of casuistry, both as touches the punctilios of
national honour and as regards an equitable division between rival
Powers in respect of the material means of mastery. So in private life
it may become a moot question--in point of equity--whether the craving
of a kleptomaniac may not on occasion rise to such an intolerable pitch
of avidity as to justify him in seizing whatever valuables he can safely
lay hands on, to ease the discomfort of ungratified desire. In private
life any such endeavour to better oneself at one's neighbors' cost is
not commonly reprobated if it takes effect on a decently large scale
and shrewdly within the flexibilities of the law or with the connivance
of its officers. Governing international endeavours of this class there
is no law so inflexible that it can not be conveniently made over to fit
particular circumstances. And in the absence of law the felt need of a
formal justification will necessarily appeal to the unformulated
equities of the case, with some such outcome as alluded to above. All
that, of course, is for the diplomatists to take care of.

But any speculation on the equities involved in the projected course of
empire to which these two enterprising nations are committing themselves
must run within the lines of diplomatic parable, and will have none but
a speculative interest. It is not a matter of equity. Accepting the
situation as it stands, it is evident that any peace can only have a
qualified meaning, in the sense of armistice, so long as there is
opportunity for national enterprise of the character on which these two
enterprising national establishments are bent, and so long as these and
the like national establishments remain. So, taking the peaceable
professions of their spokesmen at a discount of one hundred percent, as
one necessarily must, and looking to the circumstantial evidence of the
case, it is abundantly plain that at least these two imperial Powers may
be counted on consistently to manoeuvre for warlike advantage so long as
any peace compact holds, and to break the peace so soon as the strategy
of Imperial enterprise appears to require it.

There has been much courteous make-believe of amiable and upright
solicitude on this head the past few years, both in diplomatic
intercourse and among men out of doors; and since make-believe is a
matter of course in diplomatic intercourse it is right and seemly, of
course, that no overt recognition of unavowed facts should be allowed
to traverse this run of make-believe within the precincts of diplomatic
intercourse. But in any ingenuous inquiry into the nature of peace and
the conditions of its maintenance there can be no harm in conveniently
leaving the diplomatic make-believe on one side and looking to the
circumstances that condition the case, rather than to the formal
professions designed to mask the circumstances.

* * * * *

Chief among the relevant circumstances in the current situation are the
imperial designs of Germany and Japan. These two national establishments
are very much alike. So much so that for the present purpose a single
line of analysis will passably cover both cases. The same line of
analysis will also apply, with slight adaptation, to more than one of
the other Powers, or near-Powers, of the modern world; but in so far as
such is held to be the case, that is not a consideration that weakens
the argument as applied to these two, which are to be taken as the
consummate type-form of a species of national establishments. They are,
between them, the best instance there is of what may be called a
Dynastic State.

Except as a possible corrective of internal disorders and discontent,
neither of the two States "desires" war; but both are bent on dominion,
and as the dominion aimed at is not to be had except by fighting for it,
both in effect are incorrigibly bent on warlike enterprise. And in
neither case will considerations of equity, humanity, decency, veracity,
or the common good be allowed to trouble the quest of dominion. As lies
in the nature of the dynastic State, imperial dominion, in the ambitions
of both, is beyond price; so that no cost is too high so long as
ultimate success attends the imperial enterprise. So much is commonplace
knowledge among all men who are at all conversant with the facts.

To anyone who harbors a lively sentimental prejudice for or against
either or both of the two nations so spoken of, or for or against the
manner of imperial enterprise to which both are committed, it may seem
that what has just been said of them and their relation to the world's
peace runs on something of a bias and conveys something of dispraise and
reprobation. Such is not the intention, however, though the appearance
is scarcely to be avoided. It is necessary for the purposes of the
argument unambiguously to recognise the nature of these facts with which
the inquiry is concerned; and any plain characterisation of the facts
will unavoidably carry a fringe of suggestions of this character,
because current speech is adapted for their reprobation. The point aimed
at is not this inflection of approval or disapproval. The facts are to
be taken impersonally for what they are worth in their causal bearing on
the chance of peace or war; not at their sentimental value as traits of
conduct to be appraised in point of their goodness or expediency.

So seen without prejudice, then, if that may be, this Imperial
enterprise of these two Powers is to be rated as the chief circumstance
bearing on the chances of peace and conditioning the terms on which any
peace plan must be drawn. Evidently, in the presence of these two
Imperial Powers any peace compact will be in a precarious case; equally
so whether either or both of them are parties to such compact or not. No
engagement binds a dynastic statesman in case it turns out not to
further the dynastic enterprise. The question then recurs: How may peace
be maintained within the horizon of German or Japanese ambitions? There
are two obvious alternatives, neither of which promises an easy way out
of the quandary in which the world's peace is placed by their presence:
Submission to their dominion, or Elimination of these two Powers. Either
alternative would offer a sufficiently deterrent outlook, and yet any
project for devising some middle course of conciliation and amicable
settlement, which shall be practicable and yet serve the turn, scarcely
has anything better to promise. The several nations now engaged on a war
with the greater of these Imperial Powers hold to a design of
elimination, as being the only measure that merits hopeful
consideration. The Imperial Power in distress bespeaks peace and
good-will.

Those advocates, whatever their nationality, who speak for negotiation
with a view to a peace compact which is to embrace these States intact,
are aiming, in effect, to put things in train for ultimate submission to
the mastery of these Imperial Powers. In these premises an amicable
settlement and a compact of perpetual peace will necessarily be
equivalent to arranging a period of recuperation and recruiting for a
new onset of dynastic enterprise. For, in the nature of the case, no
compact binds the dynastic statesman, and no consideration other than
the pursuit of Imperial dominion commands his attention.

There is, of course, no intention to decry this single-mindedness that
is habitually put in evidence by the dynastic statesmen. Nor should it
be taken as evidence of moral obliquity in them. It is rather the result
of a peculiar moral attitude or bent, habitual to such statesmen, and in
its degree also habitual to their compatriots, and is indispensably
involved in the Imperial frame of mind. The consummation of Imperial
mastery being the highest and ubiquitously ulterior end of all
endeavour, its pursuit not only relieves its votaries from the
observance of any minor obligations that run counter to its needs, but
it also imposes a moral obligation to make the most of any opportunity
for profitable deceit and chicanery that may offer. In short, the
dynastic statesman is under the governance of a higher morality, binding
him to the service of his nation's ambition--or in point of fact, to the
personal service of his dynastic master--to which it is his dutiful
privilege loyally to devote all his powers of force and fraud.

Democratically-minded persons, who are not moved by the call of loyalty
to a gratuitous personal master, may have some difficulty in
appreciating the force and the moral austerity of this spirit of
devotion to an ideal of dynastic aggrandisement, and in seeing how its
paramount exigence will set aside all meticulous scruples of personal
rectitude and veracity, as being a shabby with-holding of service due.

To such of these doubters as still have retained some remnants of their
religious faith this attitude of loyalty may perhaps be made
intelligible by calling to mind the analogous self-surrender of the
religious devotee. And in this connection it may also be to the purpose
to recall that in point of its genesis and derivation that unreserved
self-abasement and surrender to the divine ends and guidance, which is
the chief grace and glory of the true believer, is held by secular
students of these matters to be only a sublimated analogue or
counterfeit of this other dutiful abasement that constitutes loyalty to
a temporal master. The deity is currently spoken of as The Heavenly
King, under whose dominion no sinner has a right that He is bound to
respect; very much after the fashion in which no subject of a dynastic
state has a right which the State is bound to respect. Indeed, all these
dynastic establishments that so seek the Kingdom, the Power and the
Glory are surrounded with a penumbra of divinity, and it is commonly a
bootless question where the dynastic powers end and the claims of
divinity begin. There is something of a coalescence.[7]

[Footnote 7: "To us the state is the most indispensable as well as the
highest requisite to our earthly existence.... All individualistic
endeavor ... must be unreservedly subordinated to this lofty claim....
The state ... eventually is of infinitely more value than the sum of all
the individuals within its jurisdiction." "This conception of the state,
which is as much a part of our life as is the blood in our veins, is
nowhere to be found in the English Constitution, and is quite foreign to
English thought, and to that of America as well."--Eduard Meyer,
_England, its Political Organisation and Development and the War against
Germany_, translated by H.S. White. Boston 1916. pp. 30-31.]

The Kaiser holds dominion by divine grace and is accountable to none but
God, if to Him. The whole case is in a still better state of repair as
touches the Japanese establishment, where the Emperor is a lineal
descendant of the supreme deity, Amaterazu (_o mi Kami_), and where, by
consequence, there is no line of cleavage between a divine and a secular
mastery. Pursuant to this more unqualified authenticity of autocratic
rule, there is also to be found in this case a correspondingly
unqualified devotion in the subjects and an unqualified subservience to
dynastic ends on the part of the officers of the crown. The coalescence
of dynastic rule with the divine order is less complete in the German
case, but all observers bear witness that it all goes far enough also in
the German case. This state of things is recalled here as a means of
making plain that the statesmen of these Imperial Powers must in the
nature of the case, and without blame, be drawn out from under the
customary restraint of those principles of vulgar morality that are
embodied in the decalogue. It is not that the subject, or--what comes to
the same thing--the servant of such a dynastic State may not be upright,
veracious and humane in private life, but only that he must not be
addicted to that sort of thing in such manner or degree as might hinder
his usefulness for dynastic purposes. These matters of selfishly
individual integrity and humanity have no weight as against the
exigencies of the dynastic enterprise.

These considerations may not satisfy all doubters as to the moral
sufficiency of these motives that so suffice to decide the dynastic
statesmen on their enterprise of aggression by force and fraud; but it
should be evident that so long as these statesmen continue in the frame
of mind spoken of, and so long as popular sentiment in these countries
continues, as hitherto, to lend them effectual support in the pursuit of
such Imperial enterprise, so long it must also remain true that no
enduring peace can be maintained within the sweep of their Imperial
ambition. Any peace compact would necessarily be, in effect, an
armistice terminable at will and serving as a season of preparation to
meet a deferred opportunity. For the peaceable nations it would, in
effect, be a respite and a season of preparation for eventual submission
to the Imperial rule.

By advocates of such a negotiated compact of perpetual peace it has been
argued that the populace underlying these Imperial Powers will readily
be brought to realise the futility and inexpediency of such dynastic
enterprise, if only the relevant facts are brought to their knowledge,
and that so these Powers will be constrained to keep the peace by
default of popular support for their warlike projects. What is required,
it is believed by these sanguine persons, is that information be
competently conveyed to the common people of these warlike nations,
showing them that they have nothing to apprehend in the way of
aggression or oppressive measures from the side of their more peaceable
neighbours; whereupon their warlike animus will give place to a
reasonable and enlightened frame of mind. This argument runs tacitly or
explicitly, on the premise that these peoples who have so
enthusiastically lent themselves to the current warlike enterprise are
fundamentally of the same racial complexion and endowed with the same
human nature as their peaceable neighbours, who would be only too glad
to keep the peace on any terms of tolerable security from aggression. If
only a fair opportunity is offered for the interested peoples to come to
an understanding, it is held, a good understanding will readily be
reached; at least so far as to result in a reasonable willingness to
submit questions in dispute to an intelligent canvass and an equitable
arbitration.

Projects for a negotiated peace compact, to include the dynastic States,
can hold any prospect of a happy issue only if this line of argument, or
its equivalent, is pertinent and conclusive; and the argument is to the
point only in so far as its premises are sound and will carry as far as
the desired conclusion. Therefore a more detailed attention to the
premises on which it runs will be in place, before any project of the
kind is allowed to pass inspection.

As to homogeneity of race and endowment among the several nations in
question, the ethnologists, who are competent to speak of that matter,
are ready to assert that this homogeneity goes much farther among the
nations of Europe than any considerable number of peace advocates would
be ready to claim. In point of race, and broadly speaking, there is
substantially no difference between these warring nations, along any
east-and-west line; while the progressive difference in racial
complexion that is always met with along any north-and-south line,
nowhere coincides with a national or linguistic frontier. In no case
does a political division between these nations mark or depend on a
difference of race or of hereditary endowment. And, to give full
measure, it may be added that also in no case does a division of classes
within any one of these nations, into noble and base, patrician and
plebeian, lay and learned, innocent and vicious, mark or rest on any
slightest traceable degree of difference in race or in heritable
endowment. On the point of racial homogeneity there is no fault to find
with the position taken.

If the second postulate in this groundwork of premises on which the
advocates of negotiable peace base their hopes were as well taken there
need be no serious misgiving as to the practicability of such a plan.
The plan counts on information, persuasion and reflection to subdue
national animosities and jealousies, at least in such measure as would
make them amenable to reason. The question of immediate interest on this
head, therefore, would be as to how far this populace may be accessible
to the contemplated line of persuasion. At present they are,
notoriously, in a state of obsequious loyalty to the dynasty,
single-minded devotion to the fortunes of the Fatherland, and
uncompromising hatred of its enemies. In this frame of mind there is
nothing that is new, except the degree of excitement. The animus, it
will be recalled, was all there and on the alert when the call came, so
that the excitement came on with the sweep of a conflagration on the
first touch of a suitable stimulus. The German people at large was
evidently in a highly unstable equilibrium, so that an unexampled
enthusiasm of patriotic self-sacrifice followed immediately on the first
incitement to manslaughter, very much as if the nation had been held
under an hypnotic spell. One need only recall the volume of overbearing
magniloquence that broke out all over the place in that beginning, when
The Day was believed to be dawning.

Such a popular frame of mind is not a transient episode, to be created
at short notice and put aside for a parcel of salutary advice. The
nation that will make such a massive concerted move with the alacrity
shown in this instance must be living in a state of alert readiness for
just such an onset. Yet this is not to be set down as anything in the
way of a racial trait specifically distinguishing the German people from
those other adjacent nationalities that are incapable of a similarly
swift and massive response to the appeal of patriotism. These adjacent
nationalities are racially identical with the German people, but they do
not show the same warlike abandon in nearly the same degree.

But for all that, it is a national trait, not to be acquired or put away
by taking thought. It is just here that the line of definition runs: it
is a national trait, not a racial one. It is not Nature, but it is
Second Nature. But a national trait, while it is not heritable in the
simple sense of that term, has the same semblance, or the same degree,
of hereditary persistence that belongs to the national institutions,
usages, conventionalities, beliefs, which distinguish the given nation
from its neighbors. In this instance it may be said more specifically
that this eager loyalty is a heritage of the German people at large in
the same sense and with the same degree of permanence as the institution
of an autocratic royalty has among them, or a privileged nobility.
Indeed, it is the institutional counterfoil of these establishments. It
is of an institutional character, just as the corresponding sense of
national solidarity and patriotic devotion is among the neighboring
peoples with whom the German nation comes in comparison. And an
institution is an historical growth, with just so much of a character of
permanence and continuity of transmission as is given it by the
circumstances out of which it has grown. Any institution is a product of
habit, or perhaps more accurately it is a body of habits of thought
bearing on a given line of conduct, which prevails with such generality
and uniformity throughout the group as to have become a matter of common
sense.

Such an article of institutional furniture is an outcome of usage, not
of reflection or deliberate choice; and it has consequently a character
of self-legitimation, so that it stands in the accredited scheme of
things as intrinsically right and good, and not merely as a shrewdly
chosen expedient _ad interim_. It affords a norm of life, inosculating
with a multiplicity of other norms, with which it goes to make up a
balanced scheme of ends, ways and means governing human conduct; and no
one such institutional item, therefore, is materially to be disturbed,
discarded or abated except at the cost of serious derangement to the
balanced scheme of things in which it belongs as an integral
constituent. Nor can such a detail norm of conduct and habitual
propensity come into bearing and hold its place, except by force of
habituation which is at the same time consonant with the common run of
habituation to which the given community is subject. It follows that
the more rigorous, comprehensive, unremitting and long-continued the
habituation to which a given institutional principle owes its vogue, the
more intimately and definitively will it be embedded in the common sense
of the community, the less chance is there of its intrinsic necessity
being effectually questioned or doubted, and the less chance is there of
correcting it or abating its force in case circumstances should so
change as to make its continued rule visibly inexpedient. Its abatement
will be a work not of deliberation and design, but of defection through
disuse.

Not that reflection and sane counsel will count for nothing in these
premises, but only that these exertions of intelligence will count for
relatively very little by comparison with the run of habituation as
enforced by the circumstances conditioning any given case; and further,
that wise counsel and good resolutions can take effect in the way of
amending any untoward institutional bent only by way of suitable
habituation, and only at such a rate of change as the circumstances
governing habituation will allow. It is, at the best, slow work to shift
the settled lines of any community's scheme of common sense. Now,
national solidarity, and more particularly an unquestioning loyalty to
the sovereign and the dynasty, is a matter of course and of commonsense
necessity with the German people. It is not necessary to call to mind
that the Japanese nation, which has here been coupled with the German,
are in the same case, only more so.

Doubtless it would be exceeding the premises to claim that it should
necessarily take the German people as long-continued and as harsh a
schooling to unlearn their excess of chauvinism, their servile stooping
to gratuitous authority, and their eager subservience to the dynastic
ambitions of their masters, as that which has in the course of history
induced these habits in them. But it would seem reasonable to expect
that there should have to be some measure of proportion between what it
has cost them in time and experience to achieve their current frame of
mind in this bearing and what it would cost to divest themselves of it.
It is a question of how long a time and how exacting a discipline would
be required so far to displace the current scheme of commonsense values
and convictions in force in the Fatherland as to neutralise their
current high-wrought principles of servility, loyalty and national
animosity; and on the solution of this difficulty appear to depend the
chances of success for any proposed peace compact to which the German
nation shall be made a party, on terms of what is called an "honorable
peace."

The national, or rather the dynastic and warlike, animus of this people
is of the essence of their social and political institutions. Without
such a groundwork of popular sentiment neither the national
establishment, nor the social order on which it rests and through which
it works, could endure. And with this underlying national sentiment
intact nothing but a dynastic establishment of a somewhat ruthless
order, and no enduring system of law and order not based on universal
submission to personal rule, could be installed. Both the popular animus
and the correlative coercive scheme of law and order are of historical
growth. Both have been learned, acquired, and are in no cogent sense
original with the German people. But both alike and conjointly have come
out of a very protracted, exacting and consistent discipline of mastery
and subjection, running virtually unbroken over the centuries that have
passed since the region that is now the Fatherland first passed under
the predaceous rule of its Teutonic invaders,--for no part of the
"Fatherland" is held on other tenure than that of forcible seizure in
ancient times by bands of invaders, with the negligible exception of
Holstein and a slight extent of territory adjoining that province to the
south and south-west. Since the time when such peoples as were overtaken
in this region by the Germanic barbarian invasions, and were reduced to
subjection and presently merged with their alien masters, the same
general fashion of law and order that presently grew out of that
barbarian conquest has continued to govern the life of those peoples,
with relatively slight and intermittent relaxation of its rigors.
Contrasted with its beginnings, in the shameful atrocities of the Dark
Ages and the prehistoric phases of this German occupation, the later
stages of this system of coercive law and order in the Fatherland will
appear humane, not to say genial; but as compared with the degree of
mitigation which the like order of things presently underwent elsewhere
in western Europe, it has throughout the historical period preserved a
remarkable degree of that character of arrogance and servility which it
owes to its barbarian and predatory beginnings.

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