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Title: Peace Theories and the Balkan War
Author: Norman Angell
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PEACE THEORIES AND THE BALKAN WAR
BY
NORMAN ANGELL
Author of "The Great Illusion"
1912
PEACE THEORIES AND THE BALKAN WAR
By NORMAN ANGELL,
Author of "The Great Illusion."
1912
THE TEXT OF THIS BOOK.
Whether we blame the belligerents or criticise the powers, or sit in
sackcloth and ashes ourselves is absolutely of no consequence at the
present moment....
We have sometimes been assured by persons who profess to know that
the danger of war has become an illusion.... Well, here is a war
which has broken out in spite of all that rulers and diplomatists
could do to prevent it, a war in which the Press has had no part, a
war which the whole force of the money power has been subtly and
steadfastly directed to prevent, which has come upon us, not through
the ignorance or credulity of the people, but, on the contrary,
through their knowledge of their history and their destiny, and
through their intense realisation of their wrongs and of their
duties, as they conceived them, a war which from all these causes
has burst upon us with all the force of a spontaneous explosion, and
which in strife and destruction has carried all before it. Face to
face with this manifestation, who is the man bold enough to say that
force is never a remedy? Who is the man who is foolish enough to say
that martial virtues do not play a vital part in the health and
honour of every people? (Cheers.) Who is the man who is vain enough
to suppose that the long antagonisms of history and of time can in
all circumstances be adjusted by the smooth and superficial
conventions of politicians and ambassadors?--MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL
at Sheffield.
Mr. Norman Angell's theory was one to enable the citizens of this
country to sleep quietly, and to lull into false security the
citizens of all great countries. That is undoubtedly the reason why
he met with so much success.... It was a very comfortable theory for
those nations which have grown rich and whose ideals and initiative
have been sapped by over much prosperity. But the great delusion of
Norman Angell, which led to the writing of "The Great Illusion," has
been dispelled for ever by the Balkan League. In this connection it
is of value to quote the words of Mr. Winston Churchill, which give
very adequately the reality as opposed to theory.--_The Review of
Reviews_, from an article on "The Débâcle of Norman Angell."
And an odd score of like pronouncements from newspapers and public men
since the outbreak of the Balkan War.
The interrogations they imply have been put definitely in the first
chapter of this book; the replies to those questions summarised in that
chapter and elaborated in the others.
_The "key" to this book and the summary of its arguments are contained
in Chapter I. (pp. 7-12)_
CONTENTS.
I. The Questions and their Answers
II. "Peace" and "War" in the Balkans
III. Economic Causes in the Balkan War
IV. Turkish Ideals in our Political Thought
V. Our Responsibility for Balkan Wars
VI. Pacifism, Defence, and the "Impossibility of War"
VII. "Theories" False and True; their Role in European Politics
VIII. What Shall we DO?
CHAPTER I.
THE QUESTIONS AND THEIR ANSWER.
CHAPTER II.
"PEACE" AND "WAR" IN THE BALKANS.
"Peace" in the Balkans under the Turkish System--The inadequacy of our
terms--The repulsion of the Turkish invasion--The Christian effort to
bring the reign of force and conquest to an end--The difference between
action designed to settle relationship on force and counter action
designed to prevent such settlement--The force of the policeman and the
force of the brigand--The failure of conquest as exemplified by the
Turk--Will the Balkan peoples prove Pacifist or Bellicist; adopt the
Turkish or the Christian System?
CHAPTER III.
ECONOMICS AND THE BALKAN WAR.
The "economic system" of the Turk--The Turkish "Trade of Conquest" as a
cause of this war--Racial and Religious hatred of primitive
societies--Industrialism as a solvent--Its operation in Europe--Balkans
geographically remote from main drift of European economic
development--The false economies of the Powers as a cause of their
jealousies and quarrels--- This has prevented settlement--What is the
"economic motive"?--Impossible to separate moral and
material--Nationality and the War System.
CHAPTER IV.
TURKISH IDEALS IN OUR POLITICAL THOUGHT.
This war and "the Turks of Britain and Prussia"--The Anglo-Saxon and
opposed ideals--Mr. C. Chesterton's case for "killing and being killed"
as the best method of settling differences--Its application to Civil
Conflicts--As in Spanish-America--The difference between Devonshire and
Venezuela--Will the Balkans adopt the Turco-Venezuelan political ideals
or the British?
CHAPTER V.
OUR RESPONSIBILITY FOR BALKAN WARS.
Mr. Winston Churchill on the "Responsibility" of Diplomacy--What does he
mean?--An easy (and popular) philosophy--Can we neglect past if we would
avoid future errors?--British temper and policy in the Crimean War--What
are its lessons?--Why we fought a war to sustain the "integrity and
independence of the Turkish dominion in Europe"--Supporting the Turk
against his Christian victims--From fear of Russian growth which we are
now aiding--The commentary of events--Shall we back the wrong horse
again?
CHAPTER VI.
PACIFISM, DEFENCE, AND "THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF WAR."
Did the Crimean War prove Bright and Cobden wrong?--Our curious
reasoning--Mr. Churchill on "illusions"--The danger of war is not the
illusion but its benefits--We are all Pacifists now since we all desire
Peace--Will more armaments alone secure it?--The experience of
mankind--War "the failure of human wisdom"--Therefore more wisdom is the
remedy--But the Militarists only want more arms--The German Lord
Roberts--The military campaign against political Rationalism--How to
make war certain.
CHAPTER VII.
"THEORIES" FALSE AND TRUE: THEIR ROLE IN EUROPEAN PROGRESS.
The improvement of ideas the foundation of all improvement--Shooting
straight and thinking straight; the one as important as the
other--Pacifism and the Millennium--How we got rid of wars of
religion--A few ideas have changed the face of the world--The simple
ideas the most important--The "theories" which have led to war--The work
of the reformer to destroy old and false theories--The intellectual
interdependence of nations--Europe at unity in this matter--New ideas
cannot be confined to one people--No fear of ourselves or any nation
being ahead of the rest.
CHAPTER VIII.
WHAT MUST WE _DO_?
We must have the right political faith--Then we must give effect to
it--Good intention not enough--The organization of the great forces of
modern life--Our indifference as to the foundations of the evil--The
only hope.
CHAPTER I.
THE QUESTIONS AND THEIR ANSWER.
What has Pacifism, Old or New, to say now?
Is War impossible?
Is it unlikely?
Is it futile?
Is not force a remedy, and at times the only remedy?
Could any remedy have been devised on the whole so conclusive and
complete as that used by the Balkan peoples?
Have not the Balkan peoples redeemed War from the charges too readily
brought against it as simply an instrument of barbarism?
Have questions of profit and loss, economic considerations, anything
whatever to do with this war?
Would the demonstration of its economic futility have kept the peace?
Are theories and logic of the slightest use, since force alone can
determine the issue?
Is not war therefore inevitable, and must we not prepare diligently for
it? I will answer all these questions quite simply and directly without
casuistry and logic-chopping, and honestly desiring to avoid paradox and
"cleverness." And these quite simple answers will not be in
contradiction with anything that I have written, nor will they
invalidate any of the principles I have attempted to explain.
And my answers may be summarised thus:--
(1) This war has justified both the Old Pacifism and the New. By
universal admission events have proved that the Pacifists who opposed
the Crimean War were right and their opponents wrong. Had public opinion
given more consideration to those Pacifist principles, this country
would not have "backed the wrong horse," and this war, two wars which
have preceded it, and many of the abominations of which the Balkan
peninsular has been the scene during the last 60 years might have been
avoided, and in any case Great Britain would not now carry upon her
shoulders the responsibility of having during half a century supported
the Turk against the Christian and of having tried uselessly to prevent
what has now taken place--the break-up of the Turk's rule in Europe.
(2) War is not impossible, and no responsible Pacifist ever said it was;
it is not the likelihood of war which is the illusion, but its benefits.
(3) It is likely or unlikely according as the parties to a dispute are
guided by wisdom or folly.
(4) It _is_ futile; and force is no remedy.
(5) Its futility is proven by the war waged daily by the Turks as
conquerors, during the last 400 years. And because the Balkan peoples
have chosen the less evil of two kinds of war, and will use their
victory to bring a system based on force and conquest to an end, we who
do not believe in force and conquest rejoice in their action, and
believe it will achieve immense benefits. But if instead of using their
victory to eliminate force, they in their turn pin their faith to it,
continue to use it the one against the other, exploiting by its means
the populations they rule, and become not the organisers of social
co-operation among the Balkan populations, but merely, like the Turks,
their conquerors and "owners," then they in their turn will share the
fate of the Turk.
(6) The fundamental causes of this war are economic in the narrower, as
well as in the larger sense of the term; in the first because conquest
was the Turk's only trade--he desired to live out of taxes wrung from a
conquered people, to exploit them as a means of livelihood, and this
conception was at the bottom of most of Turkish misgovernment. And in
the larger sense its cause is economic because in the Balkans, remote
geographically from the main drift of European economic development,
there has not grown up that interdependent social life, the innumerable
contacts which in the rest of Europe have done so much to attenuate
primitive religious and racial hatreds.
(7) A better understanding by the Turk of the real nature of civilised
government, of the economic futility of conquest of the fact that a
means of livelihood (an economic system), based upon having more force
than someone else and using it ruthlessly against him, is an impossible
form of human relationship bound to break down, _would_ have kept the
peace.
(
If European statecraft had not been animated by false conceptions,
largely economic in origin, based upon a belief in the necessary rivalry
of states, the advantages of preponderant force and conquest, the
Western nations could have composed their quarrels and ended the
abominations of the Balkan peninsula long ago--even in the opinion of
the _Times_. And it is our own false statecraft--that of Great
Britain--which has a large part of the responsibility for this failure
of European civilisation. It has caused us to sustain the Turk in
Europe, to fight a great and popular war with that aim, and led us into
treaties which had they been kept, would have obliged us to fight to-day
on the side of the Turk against the Balkan States.
(9) If by "theories" and "logic" is meant the discussion of and interest
in principles, the ideas that govern human relationship, they are the
only things that can prevent future wars, just as they were the only
things that brought religious wars to an end--a preponderant power
"imposing" peace playing no role therein. Just as it was false religious
theories which made the religious wars, so it is false political
theories which make the political wars.
(10) War is only inevitable in the sense that other forms of error and
passion--religious persecution for instance--are inevitable; they cease
with better understanding, as the attempt to impose religious belief by
force has ceased in Europe.
(11) We should not prepare for war; we should prepare to prevent war;
and though that preparation may include battleships and conscription,
those elements will quite obviously make the tension and danger greater
unless there is also a better European opinion.
These summarised replies need a little expansion.
CHAPTER II.
"PEACE" AND "WAR" IN THE BALKANS.
"Peace" in the Balkans under the Turkish System--The inadequacy of our
terms--The repulsion of the Turkish invasion--The Christian effort to
bring the reign of force and conquest to an end--The difference between
action designed to settle relationship on force and counter action
designed to prevent such settlement--The force of the policeman and the
force of the brigand--The failure of conquest as exemplified by the
Turk--Will the Balkan peoples prove Pacifist or Bellicist; adopt the
Turkish or the Christian System?
Had we thrashed out the question of war and peace as we must finally, it
would hardly be necessary to explain that the apparent paradox in Answer
No. 4 (that war is futile, and that this war will have immense benefits)
is due to the inadequacy of our language, which compels us to use the
same word for two opposed purposes, not to any real contradiction of
fact.
We called the condition of the Balkan peninsula "Peace" until the other
day, merely because the respective Ambassadors still happened to be
resident in the capitals to which they were accredited.
Let us see what "Peace" under Turkish rule really meant, and who is the
real invader in this war. Here is a very friendly and impartial
witness--Sir Charles Elliot--who paints for us the character of the
Turk as an "administrator":--
"The Turk in Europe has an overweening sense of his superiority,
and remains a nation apart, mixing little with the conquered
populations, whose customs and ideas he tolerates, but makes little
effort to understand. The expression indeed, 'Turkey in Europe'
means indeed no more than 'England in Asia,' if used as a
designation for India.... The Turks have done little to assimilate
the people whom they have conquered, and still less, been
assimilated by them. In the larger part of the Turkish dominions,
the Turks themselves are in a minority.... The Turks certainly
resent the dismemberment of their Empire, but not in the sense in
which the French resent the conquest of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany.
They would never use the word 'Turkey' or even its oriental
equivalent, 'The High Country' in ordinary conversation. They would
never say that Syria and Greece are parts of Turkey which have been
detached, but merely that they are tributaries which have become
independent, provinces once occupied by Turks where there are no
Turks now. As soon as a province passes under another Government,
the Turks find it the most natural thing in the world to leave it
and go somewhere else. In the same spirit the Turk talks quite
pleasantly of leaving Constantinople some day, he will go over to
Asia and found another capital. One can hardly imagine Englishmen
speaking like that of London, but they might conceivably speak so
of Calcutta.... The Turk is a conqueror and nothing else. The
history of the Turk is a catalogue of battles. His contributions to
art, literature, science and religion, are practically nil. Their
desire has not been to instruct, to improve, hardly even to govern,
but simply to conquer.... The Turk makes nothing at all; he takes
whatever he can get, as plunder or pillage. He lives in the houses
which he finds, or which he orders to be built for him. In
unfavourable circumstances he is a marauder. In favourable, a
_Grand Seigneur_ who thinks it his right to enjoy with grace and
dignity all that the world can hold, but who will not lower himself
by engaging in art, literature, trade or manufacture. Why should
he, when there are other people to do these things for him. Indeed,
it may be said that he takes from others even his religion,
clothes, language, customs; there is hardly anything which is
Turkish and not borrowed. The religion is Arabic; the language half
Arabic and Persian; the literature almost entirely imitative; the
art Persian or Byzantine; the costumes, in the Upper Classes and
Army mostly European. There is nothing characteristic in
manufacture or commerce, except an aversion to such pursuits. In
fact, all occupations, except agriculture and military service are
distasteful to the true Osmanli. He is not much of a merchant. He
may keep a stall in a bazaar, but his operations are rarely
undertaken on a scale which merits the name of commerce or finance.
It is strange to observe how, when trade becomes active in any
seaport, or upon the railway lines, the Osmanli retires and
disappears, while Greeks, Armenians and Levantines thrive in his
place. Neither does he much affect law, medicine or the learned
professions. Such callings are followed by Moslims but they are apt
to be of non-Turkish race. But though he does none of these things
... the Turk is a soldier. The moment a sword or rifle is put into
his hands, he instinctively knows how to use it with effect, and
feels at home in the ranks or on a horse. The Turkish Army is not
so much a profession or an institution necessitated by the fears
and aims of the Government as the quite normal state of the Turkish
nation.... Every Turk is a born soldier, and adopts other pursuits
chiefly because times are bad. When there is a question of
fighting, if only in a riot, the stolid peasant wakes up and shows
surprising power of finding organisation and expedients, and alas!
a surprising ferocity. The ordinary Turk is an honest and
good-humoured soul, kind to children and animals, and very patient;
but when the fighting spirit comes on him, he becomes like the
terrible warriors of the Huns or Henghis Khan, and slays, burns and
ravages without mercy or discrimination."[1]
Such is the verdict of an instructed, travelled and observant English
author and diplomatist, who lived among these people for many years, and
who learned to like them, who studied them and their history. It does
not differ, of course, appreciably, from what practically every student
of the Turk has discovered: the Turk is the typical conqueror. As a
nation, he has lived by the sword, and he is dying by the sword, because
the sword, the mere exercise of force by one man or group of men upon
another, conquest in other words, is an impossible form of human
relationship.
And in order to maintain this evil form of relationship--its evil and
futility is the whole basis of the principles I have attempted to
illustrate--he has not even observed the rough chivalry of the brigand.
The brigand, though he might knock men on the head, will refrain from
having his force take the form of butchering women and disembowelling
children. Not so the Turk. His attempt at Government will take the form
of the obscene torture of children, of a bestial ferocity which is not a
matter of dispute or exaggeration, but a thing to which scores,
hundreds, thousands even of credible European, witnesses have testified.
"The finest gentleman, sir, that ever butchered a woman or burned a
village," is the phrase that _Punch_ most justly puts into the mouth of
the defender of our traditional Turcophil policy.
And this condition is "Peace," and the act which would put a stop to it
is "War." It is the inexactitude and inadequacy of our language which
creates much of the confusion of thought in this matter; we have the
same term for action destined to achieve a given end and for a
counter-action destined to prevent it.
Yet we manage, in other than the international field, in civil matters,
to make the thing clear enough.
Once an American town was set light to by incendiaries, and was
threatened with destruction. In order to save at least a part of it, the
authorities deliberately burned down a block of buildings in the pathway
of the fire. Would those incendiaries be entitled to say that the town
authorities were incendiaries also, and "believed in setting light to
towns?" Yet this is precisely the point of view of those who tax
Pacifists with approving war because they approve the measure aimed at
bringing it to an end.
Put it another way. You do not believe that force should determine the
transfer of property or conformity to a creed, and I say to you: "Hand
me your purse and conform to my creed or I kill you." You say: "Because
I do not believe that force should settle these matters, I shall try and
prevent it settling them, and therefore if you attack I shall resist; if
I did not I should be allowing force to settle them." I attack; you
resist and disarm me and say: "My force having neutralised yours, and
the equilibrium being now established, I will hear any reasons you may
have to urge for my paying you money; or any argument in favour of your
creed. Reason, understanding, adjustment shall settle it." You would be
a Pacifist. Or, if you deem that that word connotes non-resistance,
though to the immense bulk of Pacifists it does not, you would be an
anti-Bellicist to use a dreadful word coined by M. Emile Faguet in the
discussion of this matter. If, however, you said: "Having disarmed you
and established the equilibrium, I shall now upset it in my favour by
taking your weapon and using it against you unless you hand me _your_
purse and subscribe to _my_ creed. I do this because force alone can
determine issues, and because it is a law of life that the strong should
eat up the weak." You would then be a Bellicist.
In the same way, when we prevent the brigand from carrying on his
trade--taking wealth by force--it is not because we believe in force as
a means of livelihood, but precisely because we do not. And if, in
preventing the brigand from knocking out brains, we are compelled to
knock out his brains, is it because we believe in knocking out people's
brains? Or would we urge that to do so is the way to carry on a trade,
or a nation, or a government, or make it the basis of human
relationship?
In every civilised country, the basis of the relationship on which the
community rests is this: no individual is allowed to settle his
differences with another by force. But does this mean that if one
threatens to take my purse, I am not allowed to use force to prevent it?
That if he threatens to kill me, I am not to defend myself, because "the
individual citizens are not allowed to settle their differences by
force?" It is _because_ of that, because the act of self-defence is an
attempt to prevent the settlement of a difference by force, that the law
justifies it.[2]
But the law would not justify me, if having disarmed my opponent, having
neutralised his force by my own, and re-established the social
equilibrium, I immediately proceeded to upset it, by asking him for his
purse on pain of murder. I should then be settling the matter by
force--I should then have ceased to be a Pacifist, and have become a
Bellicist.
For that is the difference between the two conceptions: the Bellicist
says: "Force alone can settle these matters; it is the final appeal;
therefore fight it out. Let the best man win. When you have preponderant
strength, impose your view; force the other man to your will; not
because it is right, but because you are able to do so." It is the
"excellent policy" which Lord Roberts attributes to Germany and
approves.
We anti-Bellicists take an exactly contrary view. We say: "To fight it
out settles nothing, since it is not a question of who is stronger, but
of whose view is best, and as that is not always easy to establish, it
is of the utmost importance in the interest of all parties, in the long
run, to keep force out of it."
The former is the policy of the Turks. They have been obsessed with the
idea that if only they had enough of physical force, ruthlessly
exercised, they could solve the whole question of government, of
existence for that matter, without troubling about social adjustment,
understanding, equity, law, commerce; "blood and iron" were all that was
needed. The success of that policy can now be judged.
And whether good or evil comes of the present war will depend upon
whether the Balkan States are on the whole guided by the Bellicist
principle or the opposed one. If having now momentarily eliminated force
as between themselves, they re-introduce it, if the strongest,
presumably Bulgaria, adopts Lord Roberts' "excellent policy" of striking
because she has the preponderant force, enters upon a career of conquest
of other members of the Balkan League, and the populations of the
conquered territories, using them for exploitation by military
force--why then there will be no settlement and this war will have
accomplished nothing save futile waste and slaughter. For they will have
taken under a new flag, the pathway of the Turk to savagery,
degeneration, death.
But if on the other hand they are guided more by the Pacifist principle,
if they believe that co-operation between States is better than conflict
between them, if they believe that the common interest of all in good
Government is greater than the special interest of any one in conquest,
that the understanding of human relationships, the capacity for the
organisation of society are the means by which men progress, and not the
imposition of force by one man or group upon another, why, they will
have taken the pathway to better civilisation. But then they will have
disregarded Lord Roberts' advice.
And this distinction between the two systems, far from being a matter of
abstract theory of metaphysics or logic chopping, is just the difference
which distinguishes the Briton from the Turk, which distinguishes
Britain from Turkey. The Turk has just as much physical vigour as the
Briton, is just as virile, manly and military. The Turk has the same raw
materials of Nature, soil and water. There is no difference in the
capacity for the exercise of physical force--or if there is, the
difference is in favour of the Turk. The real difference is a difference
of ideas, of mind and outlook on the part of the individuals composing
the respective societies; the Turk has one general conception of human
society and the code and principles upon which it is founded, mainly a
militarist one; and the Englishman has another, mainly a Pacifist one.
And whether the European society as a whole is to drift towards the
Turkish ideal or towards the English ideal will depend upon whether it
is animated mainly by the Pacifist or mainly by the Bellicist doctrine;
if the former, it will stagger blindly like the Turk along the path to
barbarism; if the latter, it will take a better road.
[Footnote 1: "Turkey in Europe," pp. 88-9 and 91-2.
It is significant, by the way, that the "born soldier" has now been
crushed by a non-military race whom he has always despised as having no
military tradition. Capt. F.W. von Herbert ("Bye Paths in the Balkans")
wrote (some years before the present war): "The Bulgars as Christian
subjects of Turkey exempt from military service, have tilled the ground
under stagnant and enfeebling peace conditions, and the profession of
arms is new to them."
"Stagnant and enfeebling peace conditions" is, in view of subsequent
events distinctly good.]
[Footnote 2: I dislike to weary the reader with such damnable iteration,
but when a Cabinet Minister is unable in this discussion to distinguish
between the folly of a thing and its possibility, one _must_ make the
fundamental point clear.]
CHAPTER III.
ECONOMICS AND THE BALKAN WAR.
The "economic system" of the Turk--The Turkish "Trade of Conquest" as a
cause of this war--Racial and Religious hatred of primitive
societies--Industrialism as a solvent--Its operation in Europe--Balkans
geographically remote from main drift of European economic
development--The false economies of the Powers as a cause of their
jealousies and quarrels--This has prevented settlement--What is the
"economic motive"?--Impossible to separate moral and
material--Nationality and the War System.
In dealing with answer No. 4 I have shown how the inadequacy of our
language leads us so much astray in our notions of the real role of
force in human relationships. But there is a curious phenomenon of
thought which explains perhaps still more how misconceptions grow up on
this subject, and that is the habit of thinking of a war which, of
course, must include two parties, in terms, solely of one party at a time.
Thus one critic[3] is quite sure that because the Balkan peoples "recked
nothing of financial disaster," economic considerations have had nothing
to do with their war--a conclusion which seems to be arrived at by the
process of judgment just indicated: to find the cause of condition
produced by two parties you shall rigorously ignore one. For there is a
great deal of internal evidence for believing that the writer of the
article in question would admit very readily that the efforts of the
Turk to wring taxes out of the conquered peoples--not in return for a
civilized administration but simply as the means of livelihood, of
turning conquest into a trade--had a very great deal to do in explaining
the Turk's presence there at all and the Christian's desire to get rid
of him; while the same article specifically states that the mutual
jealousies of the great powers, based on a desire to "grab" (an economic
motive), had a great deal to do with preventing a peaceful settlement of
the difficulties. Yet "economics" have nothing to do with it!
I have attempted elsewhere to make these two points--that it is on the
one hand the false economics of the Turks, and on the other hand the
false economics of the powers of Europe, colouring the policy and
Statecraft of both, which have played an enormous, in all human
probability, a determining role in the immediate provoking cause of the
war; and, of course, a further and more remote cause of the whole
difficulty is the fact that the Balkan peoples never having been
subjected to the discipline of that complex social life which arises
from trade and commerce have never grown out of (or to a less degree)
those primitive racial and religious hostilities which at one time in
Europe as a whole provoked conflicts like that now raging in the
Balkans. The following article which appeared[4] at the outbreak of the
war may summarise some of the points with which we have been dealing.
Polite and good-natured people think it rude to say "Balkans" if a
Pacifist be present. Yet I never understood why, and I understand now
less than ever. It carries the implication that because war has broken
out that fact disposes of all objection to it. The armies are at grips,
therefore peace is a mistake. Passion reigns on the Balkans, therefore
passion is preferable to reason.
I suppose cannibalism and infanticide, polygamy, judicial torture,
religious persecution, witchcraft, during all the years we did these
"inevitable" things, were defended in the same way, and those who
resented all criticism of them pointed in triumph to the cannibal feast,
the dead child, the maimed witness, the slain heretic, or the burned
witch. But the fact did not prove the wisdom of those habits, still less
their inevitability; for we have them no more.
We are all agreed as to the fundamental cause of the Balkan trouble: the
hate born of religious, racial, national, and language differences; the
attempt of an alien conqueror to live parasitically upon the conquered,
and the desire of conqueror and conquered alike to satisfy in massacre
and bloodshed the rancour of fanaticism and hatred.
Well, in these islands, not so very long ago, those things were causes
of bloodshed; indeed, they were a common feature of European life. But
if they are inevitable in human relationship, how comes it that Adana is
no longer duplicated by St. Bartholomew; the Bulgarian bands by the
vendetta of the Highlander and the Lowlander; the struggle of the Slav
and Turk, Serb and Bulgar, by that of Scots and English, and English and
Welsh? The fanaticism of the Moslem to-day is no intenser than that of
Catholic and heretic in Rome, Madrid, Paris, and Geneva at a time which
is only separated from us by the lives of three or four elderly men. The
heretic or infidel was then in Europe also a thing unclean and
horrifying, exciting in the mind of the orthodox a sincere and honest
hatred and a (very largely satisfied) desire to kill. The Catholic of
the 16th century was apt to tell you that he could not sit at table with
a heretic because the latter carried with him a distinctive and
overpoweringly repulsive odour. If you would measure the distance Europe
has travelled, think what this means: all the nations of Christendom
united in a war lasting 200 years for the capture of the Holy Sepulchre;
and yet, when in our day the representatives, seated round a table,
could have had it for the asking, they did not deem it worth the asking,
so little of the ancient passion was there left. The very nature of man
seemed to be transformed. For, wonderful though it be that orthodox
should cease killing heretic, infinitely more wonderful still is it that
he should cease wanting to kill him.
And just as most of us are certain that the underlying causes of this
conflict are "inevitable" and "inherent in unchanging human nature," so
are we certain that so _un_human a thing as economics can have no
bearing on it.
Well, I will suggest that the transformation of the heretic-hating and
heretic-killing European is due mainly to economic forces; that it is
because the drift of those forces has in such large part left the
Balkans, where until yesterday the people lived the life not much
different from that which they lived in the time of Abraham, to one side
that war is now raging; that economic factors of a more immediate kind
form a large part of the provoking cause of that war; and that a better
understanding mainly of certain economic facts of their international
relationship on the part of the great nations of Europe is essential
before much progress towards solution can be made.
But then, by "economics," of course, I mean not a merchant's profit or a
moneylender's interest, but the method by which men earn their bread,
which must also mean the kind of life they lead.
We generally think of the primitive life of man--that of the herdsman or
the tent liver--as something idyllic. The picture is as far as possible
from the truth. Those into whose lives economics do not enter, or enter
very little--that is to say, those who, like the Congo cannibal, or the
Red Indian, or the Bedouin, do not cultivate, or divide their labour, or
trade, or save, or look to the future, have shed little of the primitive
passions of other animals of prey, the tigers and the wolves, who have
no economics at all, and have no need to check an impulse or a hate.
But industry, even of the more primitive kind, means that men must
divide their labour, which means that they must put some sort of
reliance upon one another; the thing of prey becomes a partner, and the
attitude towards it changes. And as this life becomes more complex, as
the daily needs and desires push men to trade and barter, that means
building up a social organisation, rules and codes, and courts to
enforce them; as the interdependence widens and deepens it necessarily
means disregarding certain hostilities. If the neighbouring tribe wants
to trade with you they must not kill you; if you want the services of
the heretic you must not kill him, and you must keep your obligation
towards him, and mutual good faith is death to long-sustained hatreds.
You cannot separate the moral from the social and economic development
of a people, and the great service of a complex social and industrial
organisation, which is built up by the desire of men for better material
conditions, is not that it "pays" but that it makes a more
interdependent human society, and that it leads men to recognise what is
the best relationship between them. And the fact of recognising that
some act of aggression is causing stocks to fall is not important
because it may save Oppenheim's or Solomon's money but because it is a
demonstration that we are dependent upon some community on the other
side of the world, that their damage is our damage, and that we have an
interest in preventing it. It teaches us, as only some such simple and
mechanical means can teach, the lesson of human fellowship.
And it is by such means as this that Western Europe has in some measure,
within its respective political frontiers, learnt that lesson. Each has
learnt, within the confines of the nation at least, that wealth is made
by work, not robbery; that, indeed, general robbery is fatal to
prosperity; that government consists not merely in having the power of
the sword but in organising society--in "knowing how"; which means the
development of ideas; in maintaining courts; in making it possible to
run railways, post offices, and all the contrivances of a complex
society.
Now rulers did not create these things; it was the daily activities of
the people, born of their desires and made possible by the circumstances
in which they lived, by the trading and the mining and the shipping
which they carried on, that made them. But the Balkans have been
geographically outside the influence of European industrial and
commercial life. The Turk has hardly felt it at all. He has learnt none
of the social and moral lessons which interdependence and improved
communications have taught the Western European, and it is because he
has not learnt these lessons, because he is a soldier and a conqueror,
to an extent and completeness that other nations of Europe lost a
generation or two since, that the Balkanese are fighting and that war is
raging.
But not merely in this larger sense, but in the more immediate, narrower
sense, are the fundamental causes of this war economic.
This war arises, as the past wars against the Turkish conqueror have
arisen, by the desire of the Christian peoples on whom he lives to shake
off this burden. "To live upon their subjects is the Turks' only means
of livelihood," says one authority. The Turk is an economic parasite,
and the economic organism must end of rejecting him.
For the management of society, simple and primitive even as that of the
Balkan mountains, needs some effort and work and capacity for
administration, or even rudimentary economic life cannot be carried on.
And the Turkish system, founded on the sword and nothing else ("the
finest soldier in Europe"), cannot give that small modicum, of energy or
administrative capacity. The one thing he knows is brute force; but it
is not by the strength of his muscles that an engineer runs a machine,
but by knowing how. The Turk cannot build a road, or make a bridge, or
administer a post office, or found a court of law. And these things are
necessary. And he will not let them be done by the Christian, who,
because he did not belong to the conquering class, has had to work, and
has consequently become the class which possesses whatever capacity for
work and administration the country can show, because to do so would be
to threaten the Turk's only trade. If the Turk granted the Christians
equal political rights they would inevitably "run the country," And yet
the Turk himself cannot do it; and he will not let others do it, because
to do so would be to threaten his supremacy.
And the more the use of force fails, the more, of course, does he resort
to it, and that is why many of us who do not believe in force, and
desire to see it disappear in the relationship not merely of religious
but of political groups, might conceivably welcome this war of the
Balkan Christians, in so far as it is an attempt to resist the use of
force in those relationships. Of course, I do not try to estimate the
"balance of criminality." Right is not all on one side--it never is. But
the broad issue is clear and plain. And only those concerned with the
name rather than the thing, with nominal and verbal consistency rather
than realities, will see anything paradoxical or contradictory in
Pacifist approval of Christian resistance to the use of Turkish force.
It is the one fact which stands out incontrovertibly from the whole
weary muddle. It is quite clear that the inability to act in common
arises from the fact that in the international sphere the European is
still dominated by illusions which he has dropped when he deals with
home politics. The political faith of the Turk, which he would never
think of applying at home as between the individuals of his nation, he
applies pure and unalloyed when he comes to deal with foreigners as
nations. The economic conception--using the term in that wider sense
which I have indicated earlier in this article--which guides his
individual conduct is the antithesis of that which guides his national
conduct.
While the Christian does not believe in robbery inside the frontier, he
does without; while within the State he realises that greater advantage
lies on the side of each observing the general code, so that civilised
society can exist, instead of on the side of having society go to pieces
by each disregarding it; while within the State he realises that
government is a matter of administration, not the seizure of property;
that one town does not add to its wealth by "capturing" another, that
indeed one community cannot "own" another--while, I say, he believes all
these things in his daily life at home, he disregards them all when he
comes to the field of international relationship, _la haute politique_.
To annex some province by a cynical breach of treaty obligation (Austria
in Bosnia, Italy in Tripoli) is regarded as better politics than to act
loyally with the community of nations to enforce their common interest
in order and good government. In fact, we do not believe that there can
be a community of nations, because, in fact, we do not believe that
their interests are common, but rival; like the Turk, we believe that if
you do not exercise force upon your "rival" he will exercise it upon
you; that nations live upon one another, not by co-operation with one
another--and it is for this reason presumably that you must "own" as
much of your neighbours' as possible. It is the Turkish conception from
beginning to end.
And it is because these false beliefs prevent the nations of Christendom
acting loyally the one to the other, because each is playing for its own
hand, that the Turk, with hint of some sordid bribe, has been able to
play off each against the other.
This is the crux of the matter. When Europe can honestly act in common
on behalf of common interests some solution can be found. And the
capacity of Europe to act together will not be found so long as the
accepted doctrines of European statecraft remain unchanged, so long as
they are dominated by existing illusions.
* * * * *
In a paper read before the British Association of this year, I attempted
to show in more general terms this relation between economic impulse and
ideal motive. The following are relevant passages:--
A nation, a people, we are given to understand, have higher motives than
money, or "self-interest." What do we mean when we speak of the money of
a nation, or the self-interest of a community? We mean--and in such a
discussion as this can mean nothing else--better conditions for the
great mass of the people, the fullest possible lives, the abolition or
attenuation of poverty and of narrow circumstances, that the millions
shall be better housed and clothed and fed, capable of making provision
for sickness and old age, with lives prolonged and cheered--and not
merely this, but also that they shall be better educated, with character
disciplined by steady labour and a better use of leisure, a general
social atmosphere which shall make possible family affection, individual
dignity and courtesy and the graces of life, not alone among the few,
but among the many.
Now, do these things constitute as a national policy an inspiring
aim or not? Yet they are, speaking in terms of communities, pure
self-interest--all bound up with economic problems, with money. Does
Admiral Mahan mean us to take him at his word when he would attach to
such efforts the same discredit that one implies in talking of a
mercenary individual? Would he have us believe that the typical great
movements of our times--Socialism, Trades Unionism, Syndicalism,
Insurance Bills, Land Laws, Old Age Pensions, Charity Organisation,
Improved Education--bound up as they all are with economic problems--are
not the sort of objects which more and more are absorbing the best
activities of Christendom?
I have attempted to show that the activities which lie outside the range
of these things--the religious wars, movements like those which promoted
the Crusades, or the sort of tradition which we associate with the duel
(which has, in fact, disappeared from Anglo-Saxon society)--do not and
cannot any longer form part of the impulse creating the long-sustained
conflicts between large groups which a European war implies, partly
because such allied moral differences as now exist do not in any way
coincide with the political divisions, but intersect them, and partly
because in the changing character of men's ideals there is a distinct
narrowing of the gulf which is supposed to separate ideal and material
aims. Early ideals, whether in the field of politics or religion, are
generally dissociated from any aim of general well-being. In early
politics ideals are concerned simply with personal allegiance to some
dynastic chief, a feudal lord or a monarch. The well-being of a
community does not enter into the matter at all: it is the personal
allegiance which matters. Later the chief must embody in his person that
well-being, or he does not achieve the allegiance of a community of any
enlightenment; later, the well-being of the community becomes the end in
itself without being embodied in the person of an hereditary chief, so
that the community realise that their efforts, instead of being directed
to the protection of the personal interests of some chief, are as a
matter of fact directed to the protection of their own interests, and
their altruism has become self-interest, since self-sacrifice of a
community for the sake of the community is a contradiction in terms. In
the religious sphere a like development has been shown. Early religious
ideals have no relation to the material betterment of mankind. The early
Christian thought it meritorious to live a sterile life at the top of a
pillar, eaten by vermin, as the Hindoo saint to-day thinks it
meritorious to live an equally sterile life upon a bed of spikes. But as
the early Christian ideal progressed, sacrifices having no end connected
with the betterment of mankind lost their appeal. The Christian saint
who would allow the nails of his fingers to grow through the palms of
his clasped hands would excite, not our admiration, but our revolt. More
and more is religious effort being subjected to this test: does it make
for the improvement of society? If not, it stands condemned. Political
ideals will inevitably follow a like development, and will be more and
more subjected to a like test.
I am aware that very often at present they are not so subjected.
Dominated as our political thought is by Roman and feudal
imagery--hypnotised by symbols and analogies which the necessary
development of organised society has rendered obsolete--the ideals even
of democracies are still often pure abstractions, divorced from any aim
calculated to advance the moral or material betterment of mankind. The
craze for sheer size of territory, simple extent of administrative area,
is still deemed a thing deserving immense, incalculable sacrifices.
* * * * *
And yet even these ideals, firmly set as they are in our language and
tradition, are rapidly yielding to the necessary force of events. A
generation ago it would have been inconceivable that a people or a
monarch should calmly see part of its country secede and establish
itself as a separate political entity without attempting to prevent it
by force of arms. Yet this is what happened but a year or two since in
the Scandinavian peninsula. For forty years Germany has added to her own
difficulties and those of the European situation for the purpose of
including Alsace and Lorraine in its Federation, but even there, obeying
the tendency which is world-wide, an attempt has been made at the
creation of a constitutional and autonomous government. The history of
the British Empire for fifty years has been a process of undoing the
work of conquest. Colonies are now neither colonies nor possessions.
They are independent States. Great Britain, which for centuries has made
such sacrifices to retain Ireland, is now making great sacrifices in
order to make her secession workable. To all political arrangements, to
all political ideals, the final test will be applied: Does it or does it
not make for the widest interests of the mass of the people involved?...
And I would ask those who think that war must be a permanent element in
the settlement of the moral differences of men to think for one moment
of the factors which stood in the way of the abandonment of the use of
force by governments, and by one religious group against another in the
matter of religious belief. On the one hand you had authority with all
the prestige of historical right and the possession of physical power in
its most imposing form, the means of education still in their hands;
government authority extending to all sorts of details of life to which
it no longer extends; immense vested interests outside government; and
finally the case for the imposition of dogma by authority a strong one,
and still supported by popular passion: and on the other hand, you had
as yet poor and feeble instruments of mere opinion; the printed book
still a rarity; the Press non-existent, communication between men still
rudimentary, worse even than it had been two thousand years previously.
And yet, despite these immense handicaps upon the growth of opinion and
intellectual ferment as against physical force, it was impossible for a
new idea to find life in Geneva or Rome or Edinburgh or London without
quickly crossing and affecting all the other centres, and not merely
making headway against entrenched authority, but so quickly breaking up
the religious homogeneity of states, that not only were governments
obliged to abandon the use of force in religious matters as against
their subjects, but religious wars between nations became impossible for
the double reason that a nation no longer expressed a single religious
belief (you had the anomaly of a Protestant Sweden fighting in alliance
with a Catholic France), and that the power of opinion had become
stronger than the power of physical force--because, in other words, the
limits of military force were more and more receding.
But if the use of force was so ineffective against the spiritual
possessions of man when the arms to be used in their defence were so
poor and rudimentary, how could a government hope to crush out by force
to-day such things as a nation's language, law, literature, morals,
ideals, when it possesses such means of defence as are provided in
security of tenure of material possessions, a cheap literature, a
popular Press, a cheap and secret postal system, and all the other means
of rapid and perfected inter-communication?
You will notice that I have spoken throughout not of the _defence_ of a
national ideal by arms, but of its attack; if you have to defend your
ideal it is because someone attacks it, and without attack your defence
would not be called for.
If you are compelled to prevent someone using force as against your
nationality, it is because he believes that by the use of that force he
can destroy or change it. If he thought that the use of force would be
ineffective to that end he would not employ it.
I have attempted to show elsewhere that the abandonment of war for
material ends depends upon a general realisation of its futility for
accomplishing those ends. In like manner does the abandonment of war for
moral or ideal ends depend upon the general realisation of the growing
futility of such means for those ends also--and for the growing futility
of those ends if they could be accomplished.
We are sometimes told that it is the spirit of nationality--the desire
to be of your place and locality--that makes war. That is not so. It is
the desire of other men that you shall not be of your place and
locality, of your habits and traditions, but of theirs. Not the desire
of nationality, but the desire to destroy nationality is what makes the
wars of nationality. If the Germans did not think that the retention of
Polish or Alsatian nationality might hamper them in the art of war,
hamper them in the imposition of force on some other groups, there would
be no attempt to crush out this special possession of the Poles and
Alsatians. It is the belief in force and a preference for settling
things by force instead of by agreement that threatens or destroys
nationality. And I have given an indication of the fact that it is not
merely war, but the preparation for war, implying as it does great
homogeneity in states and centralised bureaucratic control, which is
to-day the great enemy of nationality. Before this tendency to
centralisation which military necessity sets up much that gives colour
and charm to European life is disappearing. And yet we are told that it
is the Pacifists who are the enemy of nationality, and we are led to
believe that in some way the war system in Europe stands for the
preservation of nationality!
[Footnote 3: Review of Reviews, November, 1912.]
[Footnote 4: In the "Daily Mail," to whose Editor I am indebted for
permission to reprint it.]
